Any bright ideas to tackle big ant hills on a neglected lawn?! Nematodes? Anything else?!

[AutumnDuck]

We’ve just moved to a house with a very neglected garden, containing a huge tennis-court sized lawn.

It will be for the kids to play football on so it rather needs to be flat. It’s very lumpy and dangerous at the moment.

The grass covering is pretty good but there are about 25 huge ant hills - 40 cm diameter across and about 20cm high - that have to be tackled!!

My plan is; dig them out to about 20 cms down, pour on nematodes, leave for a week, then rotavate the whole lawn (plough it basically!) before re-seeding…..

Anyone got any experience of this, or better ideas? I don’t want to use chemicals is the only rule 🤔

Just brush it in. Rake and brush regularly through the winter. It will sort itself out. With the help of hungry birds!

Yes, leave them until winter, most of them will die. Then rake and brush as above. Rotavating is wayyyy too much effort and fairly pointless longer term as the queens will hibernate or land next spring anyway.

Plant things to provide a good habitat for green woodpeckers, they love eating ants.

https://www.rhs.org.uk/biodiversity/ants

Btw you're providing the perfect ant habitat, so why not leave them be in a corner of the lawn? They'll always be there.

Also they could use ant hills as goal posts.

Just rake it flat. Mow regularly and they'll move.

Thanks guys

they’re very old and compacted, so will need to be dug out first, but it’s good to know if we keep mowing it they will hopefully move on

Btw do you think the kids might be interested in ants? The species you have is most likely yellow meadow ant (Lasius flavus), you could keep one colony in a formicarium and watch them dig their tunnels, lay eggs etc. You'd have to find the queen though!

Sorry I'm very pro-ant 😅 I have no stake in this website but I think they're interesting
https://www.antshq.co.uk/formicariums

Thank you - my eldest daughter would love this! She’s very pro-creepy crawly. She’s also the footballer who requires the flat ground so it’s a tricky one to weigh up for her!