There are over 1,000 species of carpenter ants. Most of them are large, between a quarter of an inch and an inch long, and black, although there are red ones too. There are even a few species in South East Asia which will explode if threatened, ejecting a sticky substance out through their heads which immobilizes the attackers. The exploding carpenter ant dies.

Carpenter ants are thought to do a lot of damage to timber, as they gnaw their way up the middle through its length. However, this is a popular myth, unlike termites, carpenters do not eat wood, they chew their way through it to get somewhere. They spit the gnawed wood out. This is called frass and it can often be seen in heaps like sawdust. It is a good sign that carpenters are active in or around your home.

Carpenter ants like to travel through the length of damp or rotten dead timber in much the same manner as termites do although they do not consume the timber. Carpenters feed on dead insects, dead animals and honeydew from aphids and scale insects outside the home, but if they come inside your home they will be looking for dropped or uncovered food, especially anything sweet and sugary. Therefore, hygiene is an important factor in clearing carpenters out of your home.

These ants will walk up to a hundred yards while looking for food, but they like to be close a recurring supply of food. A characteristic of carpenter ant colonies is that they may construct satellite nests away from their main colony. This is often why they go into a home.

If they regularly find spilled food in the kitchen, they may make a nest in the wall to take advantage of it, particularly if the window or door frame is a bit decayed. Inside the home, they will probably nest in a cavity wall, outside the home they prefer to construct nests in decaying tree stumps.

It is no good spraying carpenter ants with insecticide if you want to get rid of them – especially if you kill large numbers of them. This may sound odd, but the reason is that the nest will miss these workers and so the queen will increase her production of eggs to counteract it. If she over compensates, you are in a worse situation that you were before spraying.

The only way to destroy a nest of carpenter ants is to destroy the queen and the entire colony with poison. This is not difficult although it does take a bit of investigative work. Carpenters are most active between dusk and midnight, so put out honey on glass or sticky tape where they are active and follow them when they take it home.

Do not forget, they may have several nests in their colony. If you have to have light, wrap red cellophane over a normal torch, because ants can not see red light. When you have found their nests, put poison down outside each nest as indicated on the label. Do this for several days in a row until you do not see anymore carpenter ants. If you are still getting them, you have missed a nest.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on many subjects, but is at present concerned with Getting Rid Of Carpenter Ants. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Killing Carpenter Ants.

What do you do when you’ve got a poorly lit spot of land that will need grass? Don’t forget, there are particular kinds of grasses that are exclusively fashioned to thrive in shady areas of your lawn. They have evolved over many thousands of years to be best suited for poorly lit conditions, you ought to do your best to make use of this.

A nice example of this type of grass is fescue, however, you are able to still use standard grass seeds too in those poorly lit areas, but you need to be careful to use it properly, as well as keep up it’s general upkeep, because you will want to take care of grass in shaded parts of your plot of land in another way (and more professionally) than grass in wide open areas of land.

It is essential to always mow the lawn at the ideal level and consistency for the style of grass you’re dealing with. A swift search on-line will uncover all the information you’ll need to do so, but take into account if uncertain you should consult a lawn care expert.

Water the grass deeply and prune or thin nearby trees to allow more direct sunlight down onto the grass. In shady areas grass requires the maximum amount of sunshine it can possibly get. Prune, trim down, and just about rid the bordering areas of pointless sunblocks for the grass, and contemplate mulch or shade-tolerant ground covers for largely shady parts. If you have heavily shaded areas in your lawn where the grass is thinning, check with a lawn care professional for advice on improving the lawn. Web searches can be good, but nothing surpasses the quality and quanity of the advice a lawn care specialist of several decades can provide.

To learn which of the above mentioned best-of-breed grasses will work to suit your needs contact a local lawn care expert or contact your local county extension service. They will have the ability to let you know through experience those that will work for your situation, as well as point you in the path of local suppliers for each.

Additionally you want to be cautious about combining different species together. For example, Fine Fescue and Kentucky Bluegrass are generally advised for cold areas, but the two don’t go well alongside one another in the same lawn. Fine Fescue is a bunching grass, while Kentucky Bluegrass is a spreading-type grass. You’re going to find yourself with sections of fine fescue growing up out of your Bluegrass lawn and it’s going to look awful.

For more lawn care tips, as well as advice on the John Deere 145 and the Lawn Boy 10640, check out this mower blog.

Are you looking for an outdoor sink?

Just imagine that you have finished setting up your spring garden. The transplants are all in to the thoroughly turned and somewhat muddy soil. All that is left to complete is clean up your tools, wash your hands and sit back to enjoy your labors. Now you have a decision. Would you track the mud and dirt into the kitchen or the rest room? How about neither, how about using your outdoor sink? You don’t have one? Well, here are five reasons why every home should really have one.

First- Why track dirt and grime through your house when you can clean up outside? An outdoor sink is the perfect solution for those times when you have worked in the garden or on your greasy car and don’t want to produce another mess in either the rest room or the kitchen. A little soap and some hot water and the job is done and the house stays clean.

Second- One of the messiest cleanup chores there is, is the cleaning of your brushes and rollers after finishing a wallpaper project. Why take this cleaning effort into the kitchen and splatter the paint all over the counter, walls, and sink if you are able to clean everything so easily at your outdoor sink. The mess stays outside where any splattering is easily attended to and the inside of the house is spared from drippings.

Third. Bar-B-Q time is usually a time for messes. Sauce laden hands, dirty mouths, and hand sanitary concerns are all around. Who desires to end up in and out of the house again and again just for a quick clean up. With an outdoor sink, you can wash up in just a step or two. With freshwater and an outdoor sink, you can also clean up your Bar-B-Q tools super quick and easy.

Fourth. Fido needs a bath! Should we do it in the bathroom? Do you remember the last time you gave him a bath in there. He splashed water out of the tub all over the floor. When the bath was over he jumped out and shook wildly getting “doggie spray” on everything. And cleaning the bathroom took longer afterward than it did to give him the bath in the first place. With an outdoor sink, you have yet another clean up problem resolved.

Fifth. Kids birthday parties almost at all times a bunch of children running to and fro with cake and ice cream all over their faces and clothes. Do you really want to have each of these cuties go traipsing your home leaving a trail of crumbs for the ants to follow? What a wonderful time to have that outdoor sink to make cleanup a breeze.

These are just 5 reasons to have an outdoor sink. There are perhaps one hundred and five more reasons and I bet you are thinking about some right now. An outdoor sink keeps cleanup messes from becoming brought indoors, offers a place of tackling untidy water involved jobs, and makes life easier when you spend time or entertain outdoors.

Want to find out more about cheap sinks, then visit Kente Wallman’s site on how to choose the best outdoor sink that suits your needs.