If you are interested in a garden slug control measure safe around kids and pets, this works!!
dreher
Member Posts: 8,882 ✭✭✭✭
I found this out by accident. I was talking with my daughters mother-in-law about having an ant problem a while back. She said take some 20 Mule Team Borax and lay a line of it as close as I could get it to my exterior wall and presto, changeo, no ants.
I had some Borax in the laundry room so I said "Why not give it a try?" I went out and put my line of good old Ronald Reagan Death Valley Days 20 Mule Team Borax along my house wall.
Walked out the back door the next morning and I had 50+ dead slugs all over around where I put the Borax. I had no idea I had that many slugs around the back of my house. All sizes, some little ones to ones WAY bigger than my thumb.
I now know how to keep the slugs away from my canna's!
It stops slugs, makes them graveyard dead, but it didn't work for crap on the ants!!😁
Comments
It will work on roaches, however. Spread it very thinly. You want them to walk across it and get it stuck to their legs.
diatomaceous earth works for ants and lots of other insects, just cant get wet(has to be used in a dry place).
Borax is toxic to kids and pets, if they eat it!
Just sayin'
A saucer of beer set so the rim is almost at dirt level will be full of dead slugs in the morning, too.
I scatter a bit of borax in our garage annually. Toss it back under shelves right up against the wall and deep in corners. Not a roach or silverfish inside the house in almost 40 years now. In winter, we do see a few very tiny black ants in the downstairs bath. I think they come in through a hidden crack in the concrete floor. We simply put out an couple ant baits and they disappear.
No slug problem but being surrounded by trees we get a few carpenter ants invading the house about every other year. I put out Terro liquid ant bait and within 2 or 3 days the ants have disappeared. The active ingredient is borax and they ingest it and take it back to the nest where the rest eat it and die. So your daughters MIL was right but it needs to be in a form that they will eat. I suspect that the other main ingredient in Terro is sugar and that is what attracts the ants to the poison. Bob
Terro used to contain arsenic. Best anti poison ever ..I have one bottle that is 30 years old that I use very sparingly.
I have to plant peppers in containers because snails will eat the young plants. I will try the borax this season.
I used Terro for years... Then it didn't work so good. @TRAP55 suggested cornmeal. Sure enough I just put a little pile where they were coming in.... No ants. In fact this year I haven't even had any.
"Independence Now, Independence Forever."
John Adams