Scotts Max Southern Weed and Feed & Fire Ant Killer

Living in North Texas one of the worst things you can find in your lawn are fire ants. These things are just plain mean. Step on a fire ant mound and if you're lucky you might get away with one or two bites. The fire ant bite contains a poison that burns like hell, and leaves a welt. That's why they are called fire ants. I have gotten as many as a dozen bites at one time.

I used to simple treat any mounds I would find with a standard Fire Ant Killer, such as Ortho® Fire Ant Killer, and that would do the trick certainly. However, I saw an ad on TV for Scotts® Bonus® S Max Southern Weed And Feed & Fire Ant Killer, and decided to treat the problem before it became a problem.

I went to Wal-Mart and bought a 21.5 lb bag of the Scotts® Bonus Weed and Feed & Fire Ant Killer, which is good for 5000 square feet. I also got myself a small, two wheeled broadcast spreader.

I followed the instructions on the bag on how to set the broadcaster, and went over my lawn with it. As it turned out I probably should have bought the 10,000 square feet bag, because I ran out about halfway through the back yard after treating the front yard. Back to Wal-Mart I went, and got another bag.

Once I had treated the lawn I sort of forgot about it until we had a rainstorm. Rain tends to bring out the fire ant mounds. One way to tell a fire ant mound from any other type of ants is to take a long stick and disturb the mound. Make sure it's a long stick, and stand back. Fire ants will go into frenzy. If this happens, you have a mound.

After using the Scotts® Max, we did not see any fire ants through the spring well into the summer. We treated the lawn in May, and the first fire ant mound we saw and had to treat individually was in August.

The Scotts® Max also did a pretty good job of getting rid of the weeds in the lawn. For the three years we have owned the house, we have been battling various types of tough Texas weeds, form dandelions to grassy lawn weeds. For the most part we have seen relatively few weeds since we treated.

According to the advertising, and the information on the bag, the Scotts® Bonus® S Max Southern Weed And Feed & Fire Ant Killer is supposed to last all season. The protection lasted a good two months, but not the entire season. By rights we should consider retreating. However, I guess you could say that Scotts ® Max does work. It just doesn't work for as long as I would have liked.