Ants in the Compost

do ants effect plants? .... reason I am asking is that I am sorting out the garden at a pub in my village .... was clearing the flower beds of weeds today and there are loads of ants .... in one area there were tiny black ants and in another area small red ants

 

I certainly don't encourage Ants. There are always loads about in our area. They seem to like the sandy bedding for the local footpaths.
I always keep Nippon handy and, where there is an excessive multitude of Ants I give them a treatment. If not, by the end of Summer, we have flying ants and they are a real pain.

 

I don't mind ants in the flower beds, as long as they eat the bugs etc .... I'm just not sure if they damage plants aswell?

speaking of which, I turned the beds deep and removed the few remaing plants plus tons of weeds, as I will be planting new stuff there

I never saw 1 earthworm?? and the soil was moist .... I hope its not the ants killing the worms, but saying that, I never saw any worms on the areas without ants either ... the soil looks ok though (the pub used to have stables in the back, and am sure manure was used on the beds (the pub is Victorian)

 

Recently we've seen ants in the house, husband has been working on the porch and has probably disturbed them. But they're not a problem. They have a right to be on Earth, at least as much as humans do. And I suspect that they'll be here when we've damaged humankind enough to make it extinct.Why would we want to do that to another species?

 

Welcome to Gardeners Corner

 

if they mess with my huechera .... I will 'ant poision' them

 

Thank you!

 

Bless you

 

Blimey!

 

Oldhenwife I do agree with you to a point and I make a point of never killing insects BUT if the ants are killing the hugely important worms then surely it would at least be sensible to make the compost uninhabitable for the ants so they move on elsewhere and leave the worms to do their job? It's speculation that the ants are useful in compost, but it's fact that the worms are incredibly beneficial, well crucial even, for good soil and compost.
As for ants harming plants there has always been nests around my garden and i've never seen evidence of them damaging plants so i'd leave them, they're gonna be eating the pests that DO harm the plants

 

Found an ant infestation in my dalek compost bin recently and in researching if that poses a problem or not I happened on this old thread. Reading through it was encouraging, as it suggested ants would only be a benefit to compost if anything via aeriation etc.

But then I found this...http://www.antark.net/ant-life/ant-feeding/ant-farming.html

Were any of you aware of this?

Amazing creatures ants, but who knew they were farmers of other creatures?! If they're going to be moving aphids around my plants then I think a good few doses of peppermint tea and some broom-handle stirring might be in order after all!

 

I'm not messing with them, i've seen the filum