Sunflower help please!

My sunflower leaves are being eaten by something! I cant see any slug trails or catapillers! Big holes are appearing in my sunflower leaves over night any ideas?

 

Ants???; i had problems with mine witth aphids and ants some beer traps and a dose of soapy water solv ed the problem for me!!

 

thanks for your looking, Here is a picture of the damage (marley farley) I hope someone can help?

 

Being new to gadening, What do I do with the soapy water? wash the plants with it?

 

When you see greenfly and ants on the same plant, quite often something pretty gross but impressive is going on. The ants actually farm the greenfly, protecting them from predators like ladybirds. They do this because they want the yummy greenfly poo, which is very high in sugar apparently.

 

All i did was spray it over them paying particular attention to new growth areas

 

I rather like watching the ants 'farming' aphids. It's a very well organised enterprise!
Here's a photo from last summer of ant 'milking' an aphid.

​

​

 

I love this photo and agree its an interesting process to watch

 

Slugs I reckon...

 

Have a look for slugs/snails underneath those pots plus underneath the pot tray (clear pot trays available free from the bin at Homebase make the latter much easier).