Many people prefer to use home remedies to treat the ants’ infestation because it is cost-effective and easy to use an ingredient from a kitchen.
Can You Use Garlic To Get Rid Of Ants? You can use garlic to get rid of ants because its irritating scent repels insects away and disorients their trails. You can use pieces of cloves, garlic powder, essential oil, or infused oil, and prepare homemade spray using cloves. It cannot help remove colonies of ants, but it can stop them from entering your house.
The strong odor of crushed garlic can irritate the nose. In the same way, it can also affect the insects, having a strong sense of smell.
Why would you use garlic to get rid of ants?
Garlic can add flavor to food, but ants are not attracted by the pieces of cloves on the countertop. It has a strong scent that irritates insects with sensitive smell receptors.
Moreover, it has a terrible odor and leaves a prickling sensation in the taste buds and smell organs. It contains allicin or sulfur compounds, which provide a characteristic odor to cloves.
These insects rely on their sense of smell to locate food and follow trails recognizing smell. They can get confused if they detect any strong odor on their way and change their movement direction.
They release chemical secretions to make a long trail and detect chemical odors by touching the antennae on the ground surface.
It becomes challenging to recognize the pheromone’s odor if a few cloves are present, as its dominating scent diminishes the smell of pheromones.
In addition, its repulsive odor can cause disorientation of trails as they begin to move randomly in different directions and get lost. They turn heads quickly if they find garlic in front of them.
You can prevent them from accessing desirable areas by disrupting the pheromone trails. It can cause toxicity after ingestion due to ajoene, a compound with insecticidal properties.
However, this compound can kill ants if they come in direct contact with the cloves or ingest its small part. So, ants hate garlic and prefer to avoid it due to its irritating smell and toxicity.
How do you use garlic to get rid of ants?
There are many ways to use garlic as an effective repellent for ants, like garlic cloves, essential oil, powder, etc., so you can choose the one according to your feasibility.
Clove oil
You can use the essential oil of garlic to deter insects from your kitchen or other areas of the house because they feel threatened and irritated due to its odor.
Leave 2 or 3 thick drops of clove oil close to the ants’ trail and wait a few seconds.
Moreover, it is considered an effective repellent due to its natural constituents, diallyl sulfide, and diallyl disulfide, which make it repelling for ants.
Its efficiency improves many times if you mix this essential oil with peppermint oil, as both of them are potential deterrents and help get rid of these insects in the short term.
Pieces of garlic
One of the easiest ways to use it is to separate 2 to 3 cloves from a fresh garlic bulb and peel the outer covering or papery skin. You can place these cloves close to ants trails directly.
However, you can crush these individual lobes into thicker granules and spread crushed garlic on the ground surface or infestation area.
You cannot see a force field of its scent around each piece of clove that can keep insects away from a specific area. These insects cannot cross the force field and bounce back in other directions.
Garlic powder
Some people use garlic powder in their food instead of freshly crushed cloves, as it saves a lot of time, so you can use this powder to deter ants if you find it convenient.
Spread the powder in an infested area or make a line parallel to the trail of insects. These ants will disappear in a few minutes as they cannot tolerate the strong scent.
Some of them can die due to their toxicity if they accidentally touch the powder because it contains a compound with insecticidal properties.
Moreover, you can create a boundary at possible entry spots like windows and spaces under the doors because they cannot cross the border and stay away.
It is also suitable to use in outdoor areas or around plants, as you can spread it around the plant’s periphery to deter plant-damaging insects away from it.
Garlic spray
You can prepare a homemade spray using dishwashing liquid, 2 to 3 garlic bulbs, and water. Separate the cloves from the bulb and shift them to a blender without removing the skin.
Take 30ml of warm water and mix it with chop cloves properly and make a suitable spraying solution. Then, add a few drops of dishwashing liquid and blend.
Filter the mixture through a fine cloth or a strainer to remove oversized particles. Pour the strained or filtered mixture into a container and take a few tablespoons of this mixture into a spray bottle.
Add water to fill the bottle and keep this dilution around 1:10 for desired results. Spray the solution on the plant surface or infested areas like kitchen countertops to repel ants.
Garlic infused oil
Garlic-infused oil can control the population of ants, and it can give you desirable results. Use olive oil to prepare the infused oil at home, as it is pretty easy to prepare and store for a long.
Put some garlic cloves in a pan after peeling and cutting into small sizes. Add a cup of olive oil and cook at low flame until they turn brown.
Pass through sieves and filter out the pieces. Store the oil in a jar and use a few drops to deter these ants away from your food.
Will garlic keep ant colonies away?
Garlic is an effective deterrent for ants and many other pests commonly found in houses, like aphids, mosquitoes, beetles, and flies. It can help keep nuisance pests away from your home.
However, it is only a temporary solution for your infestation problem, as it cannot help eradicate the colonies of ants permanently.
You have to find a permanent solution to remove the mounds from outdoor or indoor nests. It can only deter these insects from a particular location but does not kill them.
Moreover, it can disorient the insects from accessing some areas of the house where you have spread the powder or put some cloves, but they can navigate other areas easily.
You have to replace cloves with fresh ones because they get dehydrated over time and become less effective after losing their strong scent.
Ants can return and explore areas close to the dried cloves, so it is better to replace them when you see that they are dried to maintain a deterring effect on the insects.
Their disorientation does not ensure that they are going to leave your house, as they find other suitable areas in the home for food resources that are not covered by the force field of garlic.
Accordingly, you have to use baits or insecticidal sprays to remove their colonies; otherwise, use this home remedy to get rid of the ants quickly.
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