by Gilbert Taylor A friend recently asked me what to do about ants in the garden. Well, I have ants in my garden, too, and usually don’t do a thing about them. They are nature’s clean-up crew and I’ve always been fascinated with the little critters. They usually don’t eat any of my food or damage the plants so I leave ’em alone. Of course, the fact that ants in my own garden are benign doesn’t mean they are always benign. Such was the case with my friend. They will often eat strawberries and other soft-skinned fruits and have a habit of farming aphids. The ants will actually store the aphids in the nest, bring them out to the plants when needed, and let them generate honeydew by feeding on your plants. Honeydew is a sweet-sticky substance that the ants love to eat. The problem is when it gets on your plants, it serves as a food for black mold. So even though I don’t usually need to do anything about the ants in my own garden, I watch my plantings carefully for signs of these potential problems. A safe organic method of control is easily made at home. Go to the grocery store, to the laundry section, and buy a box of borax (it’s usually on a top shelf). Then go to the bread aisle and buy a big jar of the cheapest jelly you can find. Using an old jar from spaghetti sauce or a similar container that you will never use for food purposes, fill it about 75% full of hot tap water. Now, add borax to it a heaping teaspoon at a time with stirring. After each teaspoon, stir thoroughly until it is completely dissolved. Keep doing this until no more borax will dissolve in the water. This is called a saturated solution. Now, take the cheap jelly, and pour a pint (16 ounces) of it into a disposable pie tin. Using a disposable means of measuring, add four ounces of the saturated borax solution to the jelly in the pan and mix it thoroughly until it is all the same consistency. You can make several of these. Place them in the garden where you know ants will find them, sort of buried so that the rims are even with the soil level. I put a couple of popsicle sticks around the edges of the pans so the ants have an easy time getting in and out. I also make a little cover with aluminum foil with holes in the sides where the popsicle sticks come out. The holes are big enough for ants, but not for bees. That’s because some species of bees could eat the stuff and be harmed. Pretty soon, you’ll see a steady stream of ants busily eating the jelly, and even bringing it back to the nests. Within ten days, you’ll see a substantial decrease in the ant populations in the garden. A few notes regarding borax in the garden are in order: Borax, in heavy concentrations, can be toxic to all forms of plant life – including even fungi. That’s why it is used in some forms of pressure-treated lumber. So don’t just scatter it around the garden willy-nilly. Instead, use it just as I recommended. By using it this way, even if a big rain comes along and washes the contents of the pie tin into the soil, it won’t be enough to hurt anything. In fact, it will be a bonus since cabbage family crops (especially broccoli) require small quantities of boron to thrive. Happy gardening!