Here in the southeastern US, invasive fire ants are the most aggressive colonizers of plant pots and disturbed soil, so it can be a painful experience, as well as being harmful to the plants. I have found spinosad mixed with a bit of vegetable oil and corn grits is a very effective and economical method of dealing with fire ants in plant pots, as well as in the garden and anywhere else they appear. My basic recipe is to mix a half pint of grits (I used non-quick-cook, but don't know that this matters), a tablespoon or so of veggie oil, and a splash (1/4 oz?) of spinosad concentrate. It only takes about a half teaspoon sprinkled on a mound or in an infested pot and the ants are gone in two or three days. A single recipe as per above treated every colony in my 1/6 acre yard and garden, with enough leftover to treat about two-three acres of lawn and pasture by my parents house. I would roughly estimate the cost at $0.25-0.50 cents per acre to deal with heavy infestations, and much less to deal with subsequent reinvasions as they occur - compared to $180/acre retail price for commercial bifenthrin broadcast ant killer at the recommended rate (though bifenthrin does claim 6-month residual effectiveness) or about $20/acre for acephate-based killers targeting mounds. Plus, since it is only sprinkled on colonies, I hope it is much less likely to affect native ants and other insects than broadcasting commercial ant killer. And spinosad is organic, if certification is a concern. I don't know if the ants will still take the bait after the oil goes rancid, so you may want to mix only what is needed at the time. And of course if you're dealing with ant species that eat sugar instead of fat you may have to tweak the recipe - I really only take umbrage with the fire ants. -ES _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…