Yesterday, I made ant bait that’s safe for the veggie and herb gardens, because I’m being eaten alive! I have red, angry oozing bites around both wrists, covering my right underarm, on both legs, and on my back. They’re nasty, and I’m sick of feeling itchy.

Normally, I would just dust any ants I see with some ant death powder, but it’s pretty toxic, and I can’t use it where I’m raising food. I Googled “ants in my herb garden”, and found a recipe for making ant traps:

1 cup sugar
3 tsp. boric acid (found at Walgreens, in the roach death section)
2 cups water

Mix ingredients together and pour about an inch of it into a glass jar. Stuff absorbant material like cotton, fabric, or in my case, paper towels, into the liquid. Cover the jar with a lid that has several small holes punched in it. Lay the jar on its side wherever you see ants. Move them around once a week.

I made six of these, and put two in each of my backyard beds. Within about half an hour, most of the jars had a few ants crawling on them.

Take that, ants!