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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Fire Ants in Permaculture

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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Fire Ants in Permaculture
  • Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:36:01 -0500

On 3/2/2012 12:29 PM, Chris Carnevale wrote:
Hi everyone,

Has anyone heard of or seen any models of using fire ants to till garden
beds? They make the soil so loose and friable-similar to pigs. I was
thinking it might be possible to bait fire ants to an area that I want to
convert to growing area by leaving something sugary on the ground and then
letting them do their work. Has anyone tried this? Success? Disaster?

Fire ants do amazing work. They seem to have been much more active over the past 4 years around here. We will see if that continues this year. I welcome them. I have no idea what attracts them, voles or gophers either; if I knew I would try to increase their populations on my farm.

The physical power of ants is sometimes hard to believe. I have a very hard packed crusher run (ABC quarry material) driveway and parking area. This material has been compacted when wet with huge fully loaded dumptrucks and daily traffic for many years; it is next to concrete in hardness. I have seen ants create shallow trenches, maybe 3-6", into this material all the way across the driveway and in several places.
The do as fire ants do, excavate the material, tilth it and mound it up along the sides of their trenches. You can see the thousands of them at work doing this, zipping back and forth across the drive. If they can do this to a driveway think of the potential for tilthing a farm field or garden. I do not worry about stings; I just stay out of their way. They build their mounds, seal them up and just want to be left along. If you scratch the surface they will swarm to repair any damage. This is probably when people get stung.






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