White Garden Grub, Photo © Wizzie Brown

If you don’t have a shred of optimism in your body, then you’d do best to avoid planting a food garden–especially in Texas.

The deck is automatically stacked against Lone State residents from the git go.

Mother Nature promises  nothing less to Texans than heat, drought, and pestilence, and she always keeps her promises.

Those of us who insist on growing food in this climate cannot do much about the heat or the drought. We can, however, do a little something about the pestilence.

I asked Elizabeth “Wizzie” Brown, an entomologist with the Texas AgriLife Extension Service, if she could provide a few tips for managing pests in the garden, and she obliged:

1. Choose your plants wisely- right plant in the right location;
2. Water and fertilize properly;
3. Monitor plants regularly for insect activity- know your pests and beneficials;
4. Conserve beneficial organisms’
5. Try non chemical means such as row cover, traps, collars, handpicking, vacuuming; and,
6. Make wise pesticide choices- decide if a pesticide is needed.  if so, target the pest and/ or area that needs to be managed.

 Fighting off Fire Ants

The red imported fire ant deserves a pest category of its own for the intense damage, pain and frustration it inflicts on gardens and the gardeners (not to mention other living things).  According to Texas AgriLife’s Houston based Horticulturist, Skip Richter, fighting off fire ants isn’t hard–it just takes a two-step approach.

There are also home remedies that gardeners are always trying. Why would they do that when there are plenty of commercial ant killers available? Because most are looking for methods that do the least harm to the environment while doing the most harm to fire ants.

Before I go into the treatments, as much as I hate to admit fire ants have some redeeming value–they do. They will keep flea and termite populations down, as well as chinch bugs and sod webworms.  But they will just as easily take a hunk out of you as a chinch bug, so I say they must be dispatched.

Soapy Water

I have personally had great luck using soapy water. Not commercially available insecticidal soap, but actual soapy water from the kitchen.

• 1 Gallon of water
• 1/4 cup of dish soap
• 1 teaspoon of orange oil (optional)

Mix well. To use the entire gallon to drench the mound, starting from the outside and working toward the center. This kills the ants it comes into contact with pretty quickly, and will soak into the soil and kill a few more. It’s  not a permanent solution, but it will diminish their numbers for awhile. I especially like to use a soapy water drench in a compost pile when I find fire ants there.

Dry Ice

I have never tried this, but it is one of those treatments someone tried and now swears by.

You need to be careful if you decide to use dry ice. It’s a scary product. To treat a mound, use a long wooden dowel or metal rod to bore into the fire ant mound. You’ll need to work fast, because you will be ticking off thousands of six legged devils. Remove the boring device, and into the hole you created, drop the dry ice–making sure to use tongs or heavy duty gloves. Apparently the extreme cold kills ants that have the misfortune of being home at the time the Iceman Cometh.

Dig and Drop

A method that can be effective is the dig and drop method (I made up the name). You dig up ants from one mound and dump them onto another mound. At that point they’re like the Montagues and Capulets and duke it out to the death. The problem here is that some colonies are so enormous they can cover a sizable portion of the yard, and the various mounds you see belong to one colony.  But if you are fast and can use a wheelbarrow to run shovelfuls of fire ants across the yard to dump on other mounds–more power to you.

Wizzie Brown Texas AgriLife Extension Service

Elizabeth “Wizzie” Brown is an Extension Program Specialist with Texas AgriLife Extension Service.

She received her Bachelor’s of Science in entomology from The Ohio State University and a Master’s of Science in entomology from Texas A&M University.

Yes, this woman likes to “play” with bugs, and has for as long as she can remember. She says her favorite insects are beetles.

After leaving Texas A&M, Wizzie worked in structural pest control before moving to Austin to take a job with Texas AgriLife Extension Service.

Among the work she does as a program specialist with AgriLife is efficacy trials; she tests home remedies for managing fire ants in the yard and garden.

In addition, she writes a blog every home gardener ought to read called Urban IPM (integrated pest management).

Interspersed with details and images of garden pests and the damage they inflict at various times of year, she shares snippets of her home life with her husband and her young son whom she calls “the boy.”

Whether she has a bug lover on her hands with him, only time will tell.

Fire Ants on Boot, Photo Bart Drees (Texas A&M)

Everyone loves to be in the vegetable garden this time of year, including red imported fire ants.

These six-legged devils, accidentally imported from South America to the American South via Mobile Alabama in the 1930s, have infested more than 260 million acres, with infestations reported from Maryland to California, and even Puerto Rico.

They reached Texas in the 1950s and have been marching westward ever since.

Entomologist, Wizzie Brown, says Solenopsis invicta is a problem in Texas because unlike our native fire ants, no local predator or parasite has evolved to keep this invasive pest in check. Because their numbers are immense and they are highly aggressive, it is not uncommon for them to attack animals and people by swarming and biting, with sometimes devastating results.

They’re even killing off native ant species.

Wizzie is an Extension Program Specialist at Texas AgriLife Extension Service, specializing in integrated pest management and fire ant efficacy trials, which includes testing home treatments for the pesky red imported interloper.

I met Wizzie at Richard Moya Park in SE Travis County where she was testing club soda as a fire ant treatment. It had been creating some buzz…or should I say fizz…on online gardening forums.

She’s a frequent visitor to these cyber gathering places for gardeners, where the latest home treatments for fire ants are touted. Most people are looking for safe ways to dispatch the pesky insects without using strong poisons that can have a possible negative affect on other living things and groundwater.

It was mid March when we met; we located several active mounds and Wizzie gave them “what for” with the carbonated beverage.

All it really did was anger the colony–no deaths were reported.

Wizzie says she’s also testing used coffee grounds and even oak ash. So far, she says no home treatment she’s tested for this invasive species has had any real impact on the colonies.  But as long as home gardeners talk about home remedies against this misplaced maladapted menaces, Wizzie Brown will test them.