Can You Keep Your Yard Ant-Free By Growing This Popular Vegetable?

Keeping ants out of your yard entirely is an unrealistic proposition because these small and industrious insects have survived for millions of years – 80 million years to be precise! They even survived the dinosaur extinction. Whether you love them or hate them, ants perform important functions within our ecosystems, such as aerating the soil and disposing of dead insect carcasses. While you might have heard that growing a popular vegetable in your garden will keep ants away, there's no definitive scientific proof that this actually works, even though many gardeners will tell you that it does. What is this popular vegetable? Garlic, of course!

Let's discover why so many garden enthusiasts will tell you that garlic will deter ants, so that you can make up your own mind if you want to give this a try. But before you grow more garlic than you'll ever know what to do with, take a little trip into the world of ants and learn about their interesting social structure and how they can actually be quite useful in the garden, even if you don't want them invading your home. This might help you to understand why you should avoid killing the ants in your garden. On the other hand, you might also be interested in the best ways to banish carpenter ants from your home using non-repellent sprays and baits.

If you've ever grown garlic (Allium sativum) in the garden or used it in the kitchen (and who hasn't?), you'll know that it has a very pungent aroma. This strong smell comes from the organosulfur compounds found in garlic. These compounds are also responsible for the sharp taste associated with garlic. While crushed garlic cloves are particularly aromatic, the leaves of the garlic plant also have a strong odor, especially when bruised or crushed. 

It's this overpowering scent that is said to be responsible for repelling a range of different insects, including ants. But there's more to the story here. Ants actually use their own scents to communicate with each other. When they find a suitable food source, they'll lay down a pheromone trail so that the other worker ants in the colony can find the food source and help to take it back to the nest. Strong odors, such as that of garlic, are said to mask the presence of this pheromone trail so that the ants will lose their way. 

This is only believed to be a temporary setback and the ants are likely to find an alternative route instead. So, while there's not a whole lot of scientific proof that garlic will deter ants and it would be virtually impossible to evict all ants from your garden anyway, there's no harm in growing some garlic in your garden and using it in your favorite meals. Plus, you can investigate which birds that will eat those pesky ants in your garden and how to attract them.