How can I eradicate ants nests??

Hi here, I've just signed up 2nite as advice is needed for ants in the lawn.

We have had them for about 3 yrs now and have tried pouring boiling water over them (which scolds and kills off the lawn) to sprinkling ant powder (this just subdues the ants and numbers reduce slightly). At worst we have had upto 100+ nests, although at present we are down to around to 90 (ish) varying from 4-5" to 1' in diameter.

These do not look the same as the 'typical' black garden ant as these appear to have a red tinge in appearance. They are not very noticable until the lawn is mown and then we unearth the mounds of soil which contain these ants, of which are vast quantities within each nest. Short of ripping up our lawn (of which I really do not want to do) and relandscaping the garden is there anything we can do to eradicated these pesky little blighters??

 

Why do you want to irradicate them? The reason I ask is that if you irradicate one nest, then next season a queen will set up another nest. your soil is obviously attractive to them.

I have ants nest in my lawn, mainly red ants - the only problem they cause is when I mow the lawn. Red ant bites are a tad irritating, so I wear appropriate shoes - but they don't cause me any other problem after 20 years. I leave them alone (except when mowing) and they leave me alone. My lawn, with the exception of bit of soil spoil looks no different than if they weren't there.

 

Until these arrived we had a lovely green lawn, now it's very patchy, grass is dying in areas of the nests and worst of all we are having problems with the grass sinking quite significantly in a lot of places and does not make for an attractive garden at all.

 

There was a thread about this on this topic site on 8/7/07. Scroll down and have a peek