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So, there was this defunct anthill at the summer cottage, that I decided to turn into a vegetable patch. After the fact, I'm wondering how good compost the stuff really was.

So, what sort of compost would an anthill make, and what sort of additional fertilizer might I need? This one was under a pair of large firs that were cut down a while ago, if that makes a difference.

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Ants are very interesting creatures and with many different kinds of ways of being. Given that without knowing which kind of ant I can only go by statistics which say that most ants do not create compost.

They do make tunnels and that can improve the drainage of an area, but generally that's about it. They haul their dead and waste products away and discard them.

Only some species do things that may improve the soil (harvesting leaves and growing fungi and then feeding off that or harvesting seeds and storing them, etc.) underground in their hills and that's not a large majority.

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