Been battling tiny ants on my pepper plants all fall and have been slowly losing. these are the ants that farm aphids and my peppers have been suffering all fall. Any new growth is very stunted and tightly curled up. I have sprayed the leafs with mild dish detergent (Seventh Generation) and gently cleaned off the leafs, but they always come back.

I got mad and sprayed poison (gasp) around my raised garden beds trying to create a "impenetrable defense shield" around the garden, but that didn't work.

I followed the ant trail (on my hands and knees) across the garden to their home and poured fire ant granules all over it. They just packed up and moved to the other side of the garden (that stuff most only work on FIRE ants)...

Finally searched the web and found a reference stating that cinnamon sprinkled around the the plants would keep the ants away. I did a little more searching, using the key words "cinnamon" and "ants", and found a few more testimonials.

Today, I washed the pepper plants again, wiped the aphids and ants off the leaves and sprinkled cinnamon around my peppers... then sprinkled more around the beds and even more where I thought the new ant home was.

can't say if this worked yet, but I can say the ants definitely don't like cinnamon. one of their little "highways" was along the top edge of the raised garden frame. Caught 3 little ants walking along it; put a small mound of cinnamon in front of them and sprinkled some more about foot behind them. I have never seen these guys run so fast.... they weren't smart enough to detour around the cinnamon, they just kept running back and forth (faster and faster) between the spots of cinnamon. I did enjoy seeing their frustration/confusion.

I hope this is a long term fix (even if I have to apply it daily). Guess I'll have to keep a supply of cinnamon with my gardening supplies.