For people with cats and dogs, using chemicals about the house and yard is always a risk. If, however, you have ants, you may be willing to take the risk just to be rid of these unwelcomed visitors. There is a safe way to do this. Use old coffee grounds. That will fix the ant problem; and your cat and dog are not at risk.

If there is an area of the garden that you want to protect, a border of coffee grounds will keep the ants away. If you happen to find where the ant hill is, place coffee grounds on the ant hill and around the area. You will see that your ant problem has vanished in a couple of days.

The theory of why this works is that the residual caffeine in the coffee grounds does not agree with the ants. It is supposedly deadly to the ants. In any case, it works. And if you have a huge problem with ants, you might want to stop at the local coffee shop and ask for the grounds that they are throwing away. The grounds that you don’t use can be used as nitrogen for your compost and / or garden. The coffee shop will be glad to see you hauling away their trash.

Catherine Forsythe

Tags: ants, toxic chemicals, dogs, cats, coffee grounds, caffeine, compost, garden, nitrogen