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Folks in the far north and far western portions of Texas will not identify much with our fire ant fights. These complex insects have left those parts of the state alone, while infesting the hill country and almost all counties around us.

This problem is a baptism by fire ant for gardeners who have not faced the problem before. Fellow gardener Judy Tye, who worked for the Texas Department of Agriculture for 20 years, was a fire ant specialist for part of that time. Now retired, she still fights fire ants in her own garden. One of Tye’s jobs was taking out the bigger mounds, which involved shoveling dirt onto a tarp while the angry ants crawled in different directions. She picked through the ants with a special tool that looked like a pair of tweezers and put them into vials. Once they had about a dozen ants in a vial, they poured in alcohol to kill them, closed the vial, labeled it and made a note of location, soil temperature and surrounding vegetation.

She and others also made public presentations on the TDA-approved ways of dealing with fire ants "in an effort to keep people from pouring diesel fuel on the ground to kill them."

Tye learned these important facts about the nuisance known as the red imported fire ant:

Start your control methods in the spring after the ground heats up to above 65 degrees. Do not try to kill fire ants after September because they are not foraging as much for food then.

Avoid warning fire ants you are coming by poking a stick in the mound to see if it’s alive, or even gently scraping dirt off the top. They feel the vibrations and will move the queen if they sense a threat. "Gamble a little bit if you see a mound. Put down the bait," Tye said. "You’re only using a pound and a half per acre of bait anyway. Nine times out of 10, it is not an empty mound. If you disturb them, you more than likely will not be able to kill the queen." And killing the queen is imperative to control the spread.

Advion, a fast-acting bait, is the most effective treatment she knows of currently on the market. It takes a week or so to work. For pastures, she suggested Extinguish, an insect growth regulator. It sterilizes the queen to prevent reproduction, Tye said. "They do say that it’s very slow. You can mix it with Advion to speed up results."

Amdro is available and "not very toxic at all," Tye said. "The lethal dose for a person would be 22 pounds. It would be hard to ingest 22 pounds. However, Amdro is toxic to fish and thus not safe around ponds. It also has to be kept fresh, because if the oil on the bait gets rancid, the ants won’t take it. Store it inside.

Amdro is Tye’s personal choice, and she spreads it with a handheld seed spreader. "Don’t put bait on top of the mound. Just broadcast it. Pay no attention to where the mounds are — just try not to step on them."

Apply pesticides when no rain is forecast. In spring, it’s best to apply in the morning after the dew has dried. During summer, treat in the evening. "Don’t put it out in the heat of the day in summer," she added. "Fire ants come out in the evening to forage."

Some of my fire ant weapons and their results include:

Beneficial nematodes. The folks at a nursery said these work. They seemed to, for a while, and reports say repeated use is more effective than one-time use. Results: Mounds move nearby.

Spinosad. It looks like corn meal, has a chemical smell, and seems to work in killing the mounds. Results: Mounds move nearby.

Boiling water. This works, but it also kills grass and other vegetation. Results: Mounds move nearby.

Garden-Ville’s Antifuego Soil Conditioner. This mixture of molasses, orange oil, phosphoric acid, urea and water smells great. Directions on the bottle say to pour it both on top and around the mound. My advice is to be sure to take this final step, cutting a pretty wide swath around the mound. Results: Mounds move nearby.

Corn meal. A man at a water treatment plant in San Marcos said he uses this on the mounds around the plant. Corn meal is cheap, which also makes it an attractive method. Results: Mounds move nearby.

See a theme? You can make the mound — a complex setup of tunnels for a complex society of ants — uninhabitable. But the ants just move a few feet away. This is what the experts have found as they have tried to eradicate this pest for more than 50 years. They had brief success, or so they thought when they eliminated the first mound in the late ’50s. But the fire ants liked Texas and other Southern states, and began their rapid march across agricultural and urban lands before 1960. A TDA booklet, "Imported Fire Ants: Life History and Impact," published in 1986, noted that "no one is thinking any longer in terms of eradicating the problem. The key word is ‘control.’"

Barbara LeDoux Elmore grew up in Johnson City and gardens in Fredericksburg. She

publishes a free online garden and home newsletter. To subscribe or suggest story ideas, e-mail her at barbara@digandletdig.com.