That would take a lot of soap here at my house. I don't have too many beds popping up in the garden and if I see one it is usually on the edge of the bed and a little Amdro takes care of it. Another thing that works really well is using boiling water and pouring it onto the bed. It usually takes about a gallon or two depending upon how large the bed is. When I first moved into this location 40+ years ago it was heavily infested with fire ants and I would take my fish cooker and set it up in the middle of where the worst ant beds were and heat a couple of gallons of water in a large pot and dip out a half gallon at the time so as to minimize the risk of carrying too much boiling water at a time. It is a good idea to wear long pants when doing this because if you splatter it on your legs it can be painful. When Amdro first came out I started using it in my yard and kept using the boiling water in the garden and gradually over the years the fire ant presence was reduced to a minimum. Now whenever I see just the start of a small bed I will treat it immediately with Amdro and by doing so I rarely have to deal with a real fire ant bed.
I'm sure if I really let up on treating the fire ants for a year or two I would have some significant increases in fire ants on my property. I tried some of the recomended poisons on the mounds years ago before Amdro and they did kill a lot of workers but the result was a lot of new beds popping up all over. So to me the treatment was almost worse than just avoiding the mound since a lot of little beds will get you stung more than one or two large ones that are easily avoided. It was after this experience that I tried the boiling water which was a lot of work and took a fair amount of time. It wasn't until the invention of Amdro that I really took control of the fire ants. I had to use a good bit of it the first two years or so but after that it was just a matter of checking for new small mounds showing up a few days after heavy rains and treating them with a small amount of Amdro.
Dawg you might want to try the boiling water on the ones in your garden and purchase some Amdro for your yard. If you can get them really under control in your yard they won't be so much of a problem in the garden. They don't particularly like to build where the ground is tilled frequently but a few will try occasionally. I don't think it is very poisonous in small quantities from what I have read and I don't think cats are very likely to walk through fire ant beds anyway. I have seven dogs and rarely see a dog print in a fire ant bed even a small one.
Bill
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