Justyn Livingston

Greetings. I’m new to this site - thanks for your patience. I live in Uruguay and cannot access ‘eco’ products. I found a recipe from. Portugués website - for a natural sealer/protector. You can add earth pigments to give it color. All of the ingredients have insect repellent qualities. I’ll try to remember the name of the website..
The recipe:
100g diatomaceous earth
100g borax
100g orange oil (essential oil)
100g wood ash (sifted)
3 liters linseed oil.
Here in Uruguay the oil we bought does not specify whether boiled or not. I imagine not but who knows. In any case, it takes time to dry but is a beautiful finish. And can be further covered with a homemade wax mix,
Which we also used to finish our wood floors. Less is more as my husband and I learned.
I changed the recipe to make it less sticky.
57g caranuba wax
29g beeswax
1 c olive oil
10drops lavender essential oil.
Put the lavender oil in olive oil the night before making the wax. Then melt everything in a double boiler. Voila. Apply lightly then buff.

Thanks so much Anne. Ive used vinegar too. I forgot to put that on my list. They still keep coming. 🐜🐜🐜

Hi everyone. I am new to this forum. A year ago I moved to Uruguay and married a lovely Uruguayan man. We bought 27 acres and an old adobe brick house that we are restoring as naturally as possible, along with growing our own food. Here is our CHALLENGE: ants. All kinds. They eat through everything. And they are coming up through our wood floor in the bedroom that we just put in a month ago. I have tried a blend of neem oil and soap spray, cinnamon, diatomaceous earth. Does anyone have other ideas? We are concerned about our foundation (which is earthen brick and a thin layer of concrete (sorry about the concrete, we’re learning). The se ants eat through concrete. Very quickly. And put piles of dirt in the room in just days.
A side note: I’ve mixed an impermeable paint with nopales using the anthill dirt as a pigment, if anyone wants the recipe.
Any advise on how to control the ants would be great!!! Thank you. And thank you Paul for creating such a rich resource. ❤️