0:00If you grow in the south, there's a good chance that you are struggling with fire ants. I'm here at Bountiful Blessings Farm with my dad, John, and we're going

0:07to talk about how they handle fire ants nests like this. This is inside of one of their green houses, and these guys have really built quite a nest here.

0:16They are underneath the the landscape fabric, and it makes working in and around this area challenging. So, how do

0:24you guys handle fire ants? For full total disclosure, we do not have a

0:32aggressive strategy for dealing with fire ants. I feel like for us, they're more of a nuisance. They haven't been an

0:40economic liability at this point. So, we don't have a real strategy. But what I

0:47can tell you from my research and from our experience that there are two things that I think really can help from

0:55organic an organic perspective and one is predatory

1:02nematodes and we have limited experience with this. We've used them 2 years, but when we have used them,

1:11sprayed them on in the spring, we have noticed a difference. And I feel like we're seeing it now. You know, we have a

1:20fire ant nest here, but all the nests from from talking to the others working on the farm, they seem to be very weak.

1:30Mhm. And I'm hoping that that's from the predatory nematodes. There's a company called

1:37Arbico or I don't know how they pronounce it but Arbico or that sells them. We we spray it on in the spring

1:46and ideally we would do it again in the fall and that I think is helping. Now

1:53are you spraying it everywhere or is that just targeted for like fire ants nest? No, everywhere because it's it's

2:01dealing with things any any insect that has a life stage in the soil.

2:08Uh you know, cucumber beetles, uh flea beetles, all these things, the the predatory nematodes can help with that.

2:18Well, I I know at my house, we have a lot of fire ants nests out in the the yard and also in our garden beds, we've

2:26had challenges with it and they are very they get very large and there's, you know, what seems like millions of fire ants. Even this one seems like a pretty

2:34weak colony, but then the other ones we were looking at over in those other field plots, you know, you can see that at one point it had been a a large nest,

2:42but there was no fire ants visible. and digging down into it by hand, I saw just a a few, but not not many. Um, so yeah.

2:51So, you know, it's a little early to say, but I do think that the predatory nematodes work. The other thing that

2:59you'll see mainly online, you know, as a an organic solution is anything with the active ingredient spinosid or some people say spinosad.

3:13um s p i n o s a d is supposed to work and you know you kind of drench the

3:21colony in it. You just read the directions for whatever product. I think you all sell what the Monterey insect

3:29spray or something that has the spinosid in it. Yes.

3:33um that is supposed to work and again we haven't aggressively tried it but I

3:42think between those two if you really work at it I think you should be able to

3:50to if not eliminate at least you know really knock down the fire ants for sure. So

3:59these little guys can be a very pesky nuisance in your garden or on your farm.

4:04So if you have experience, give us your feedback on how you handle fire ants or give the uh nematodes a try or or a

4:13product with spinosid to try to knock them out and give us your feedback on the results that you see. So we appreciate you watching these videos.

4:22Until next time, happy growing.