Ants

Hi folks. I`m sure this question has been asked before but nevertheless I`ll ask anyway. Are ants pests ? The reason I ask is because I seem to be infested with them(we`re talking garden here) and I would like to know if I need to do something about it (if anything CAN be done !) Any advice welcome. Cheers...freddy.

 

Hi the ants themselves mostly do damage by building nests which damage roots, however they also farm other insects which do damage plants, such as aphids. They will even move these insects around to new 'fresh' plants.

See here for further details:
http://www.royensoc.co.uk/classification_whatis_ants.shtml?insect=ants

I would put down the liquid poison to kill of the queen in the nest and you can try sprays or simple boiling water

When we moved into our house the garden was absolutely full of ant hills. The other half (and I do not recomend this dangerous activity!) poked a hole in the top of the hills and pored a little petrol into each - left this to soak for a few hours and then (carefull) lit them, you could hear the fire rush down the tunnels they had made under the garden! - As I said DO NOT TRY THIS i would not wish to feel responsible for any injuries. We still continue to fight the ants, I don't think it's ever possible to remove them altogether but they are a little more manageable these days.

good luck

 

Hi Diziblonde. We don`t appear to have any anthills, it`s just that every time I dig, there`s always ants in the ground, millions of `em ! When you say `liquid` poison, do you mean something like Nippon ? Cheers...freddy.

 

Yes - the stuff that comes in little squeezy tubes. Put it onto something flat and non absorbant that they can easily get to. Somewhere near the nest is best (anywhere you see loads of them) the advantage of using this stuff is that they take it back to the nest and feed it to the queen

 

Okey Dokey Dizi (nice ring to, it that ) I`ll give it a go, thanks.

 

hi, further to the above advice, can i put this in a container? Will it damage my pansies? for some reason this one pot (& pansies) are swarming with them? Looks like a couple of flowers (actually there is a viola in there too) are dying and as I haven't got many flowers yet i'm not too pleased.

Noticed them all over my neighbours rose bush too for the first time this year. any ideas?

thanks

 

Hi Borrowers, I had the same with one of mine. I put bottle lids into the soil and put the liqued ant killer into them (top it up each day until no more ants and dont forget to remove them whilst you water). The I bought the ant spray and sprayed the outside of the pot and surrounding area.
It seems to have worked! - No damage to the plants even though some of the spray must have got on them.

 

Thanks dizi, i'll get some tomorrow.

cheers mate

 

I wouldnt waste money on it, I do the odd bit of pestcontrol and can tell you that even the profeshional products dont really work.

The only time ive ever botherd to treat garden ants is when theyve been coming into property and generally this can usually be solved with a tube of sealnt and no pesticide.

 

Hi Pro Gard - I agree that you'll never get rid of ants:thumb:, but it definately stopped them making a nest in my newly planted tub, and it has stopped them nesting in unwanted areas.

They can have the rest of the garden:D. Trust me if you'd seen then ant hills all over my garden when I moved in and the fact that we now only have a 'normal' amount of ants, you'd understand! I certainly don't try to rid the garden of ants completely - I'd never get any gardening done!!

 

Hi all

I was wondering if we might have an ant problem too... we planted a couple of french beans and courgettes (the beans seemed to be okay although the courgettes may have been planted out too early) and they seemed very healthy at first only to turn yellow and limp and die within a couple of weeks. We can't fathom what the cause might be but we have seen a *lot* of ants in the soil (they have even ventured inside our house!) and we've noticed that they were swarming around the beans and crawling all over the stems.

We wondered whether the ants were doing damage in some way... perhaps by farming aphids. We haven't seen any aphids on the courgettes but there were a few on the beans. We're also wondering whether there's a nest just below where all our plants seem to have been mysteriously dying off!

We haven't been able to locate an actual nest so we're at a bit of a loss as to how to approach the problem. We don't want to put poison down because it's an organic veg plot, and without a definite location for the nest we've nowhere to try things like boiling water. Is there anything else we could do? Aside from setting the soil on fire

If anyone has any thoughts I'd be grateful! Cheers,

Paddy

 

Just thought I'd let you know that nearly all the ants seemed to have disappeared, hooray. Thanks dizi, did that thing with stuff on a bit of tin in the pots. Although my pansys have had it i think there was one ant in there today.

cheers

 

Hoorah, I'm glad it worked for you borrowers.

I found a patch of the dead lawn the other day and when I poked a stick into it lots of RED ants came running out - eek!

 

.
If you can get Pif-Paf spray, then no ants!

Last year got 3 tins for a quid in the "Poundshop", but have not seen any this year

Cherrio