The season for invading ants arrived, and the best defense I’ve been using for decades is an environment friendly attack with help from Trader Joes.
For decades, I’ve suspected it was the weather and years ago I stumbled on the best method, for me, to control the ant invasions. I spray the ants with Trader Joes Fruit and Vegetable Wash. It kills the ants the instant the spray hits them and ants that enter later tend to avoid the area that was sprayed because it appears that just walking across TJ’s F&V Wash while it is still wet is enough to not only disrupt the trail but kill those ants too. If you can find the entry point and spray that, it forces the ants to find another way in or they don’t return.
I don’t use pesticides inside my house. Can’t stand the stuff. Instead, I use TJ’s Fruit and Vegetable Wash and it is non-toxic. I learned about this product designed to safely clean what we eat by accident. I grabbed the only spray in sight and haven’t stopped using it since. The neat thing is: it is formulated to remove waxes, pesticides, and chemicals.
After decades of winning these invasions and driving the ants out of my houses, curious, I finally Googled the topic to find out if my suspicions were correct, and discovered from a study out of Stanford that they were.
The Stanford News Service reports, “Household ant invasions are determined by weather, not pesticide use, new study finds … “Ants are most likely to enter homes in cold, wet conditions, typically in the winter in Northern California,” they write, noting that a smaller peak in the level of infestation occurs during hot, dry conditions — typically in August and September.”
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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam combat veteran with a BA in journalism and an MFA in writing, who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
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Lloyd Lofthouse 
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