Quick Ant Fix for your Garden Beds and Around the House

It's a BEAUTIFUL Easter day here! I don't want to be inside writing all day, so this will be short and sweet. I want to go hunt Easter Eggs with the kids (like I remember where I hide the eggs anyways, and we usually lose an egg or two that we find a couple weeks later Stinky Stinky!)

Ants- they are fun to watch but can wreak havoc on a garden or in any area of the house. We have fire ants predominantly here, but almost every yard is infested with some type of picnic ant, carpenter ant or fire ant. There is a simple, organic fix to keep ants at bay-Borax. Who knew Grandma's cleaning secret was also an ant killer?

Here's what to do. For major infestations, mix 8 teaspoons of powder borax (found in the laundry aisle of many grocery stores) about 4-6 teaspoons of sugar with a few cups of boiling water. Once the borax and sugar are fully dissolved in the water, let it cool enough to not melt a spray bottle when filled. Pour the solution into the spray bottle, and spray the infested area. You have love my exact measurements! Really there are no set measurements, so use the amounts that work best for you. The sugar attracts the ants who eat the solution and then die. I have heard differing reason why they die, but the main thing, to me, is the fact that they die, or at least that they move away. This solution may need to be resprayed daily for a few days, and then weekly for keeping them gone, but check the area regularly to know what best meets your needs.

For a seasonal application to keep ants at bay, sprinkle borax around the edges of your home or around the outside of your garden beds when planting as a preventative measure. It's safe and when done every spring will keep the ants away.

I hope this helps new and experienced gardeners, and as always....Have fun playing in the dirt!!
Peace!

New Greenhouse

We found a "great deal" on a 10x12 greenhouse at Harbor Freight. It went on sale, plus I had a 20% off super coupon, so I got it at a GREAT price. It has a steel base, aluminum frame and plexiglass panels. The entire thing weighs a little over 200lbs. It's made in China, which I didn't care to know, but for the price, I had to give it a whirl.

Being made in China, the directions were written in what I now call "Chin-English". Building this thing was a comedy of errors, and had it not been for the diagrams, I can't say we would have been able to fully understand the directions. We had laid a foundation of concrete for it, to make it a more permanent structure, and then anchored it to the cement with some sort of fancy cement anchors (I'm glad my husband already had some on hand but who keeps cement anchors on hand? haha). A tip when using concrete anchors, have a good cement drill bit handy to pre-drill the holes, and maybe an extra bit too. The parts didn't all fit correctly and had to be altered (thankfully I married "McGuyver"). It was very difficult to tell which side was the front or top of most of the parts as well. It took a LOT of patience to assemble, but once assembled it looked GREAT! 

Then came the storms. We didn't reinforce the panels with screws like the reviews recommended. Big Mistake! The storms came with high winds and a lot of rain. The next day my greenhouse was water logged, and some of the panels had blown off. Thankfully, they were still in the yard, so I was able to reinstall them, but without sheet metal screws, the best I could do was clip them back into place. Tomorrow we will screw them into place permanently, and we will also caulk around the edges of each panel to "waterproof" them. There are a few gaps in the frame corners we will secure as well, to ensure it stays warm enough in winter for my tropical plants. It doesn't get super cold here, so I shouldn't need much of a heater in there, if at all, but closing all the gaps will definitely help. It turned out pretty nice, if I do say so myself. Thanks to my husband and our youngest two daughters, this was such a fun project! All-in-all this has been an adventure, but then again what project isn't....Life is a journey...enjoy the ride.

Have fun playing in the dirt!