Is mint the answer?

Tweet

We had a few ants coming into the kitchen and although there weren’t very many and they were not really a problem, I was concerned it would get worse. Generally once one ant finds something interesting they leave a trail and all the others will follow. And of course Paola, with her sharp eye for anything small with lots of legs, quickly noticed and pointed out the issue. My partner’s response was simply to rush about squishing ants as fast as he could find them, which didn’t really get to the root cause of the situation because they kept coming in; it just left dead ants about the place, and seemed really unnecessary. I couldn’t find anything particular that was attracting them. In the past the compost bin has been the prime culprit but they didn’t seem to be heading for that this time. Meanwhile Paola looked up ways to deter ants and found reference to various substances that are supposed to repel them, one of which is mint. Well we certainly have plenty of mint! Rather than rushing out to buy some sort of anti-ant mint spray, the simplest thing seemed to be to try out fresh mint from the garden. I cut a few springs and laid them under the doormat. About twice a week I cut a couple of fresh sprigs to replace the old ones. I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence but we have hardly seen an ant since. Now someone told me that mint is also supposed to repel spiders. Maybe I’ll try that next, it ought to be easy enough to test because we have plenty of both! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2026.