ants in my plants

[budsta]

Dunno if anyone else has this problem but I always get ants nestin in my plants.

For years now I have had a returning colony of ants in my grow shed. They nest in the actual pots themselves. I grow in 19 inch pots using recycled nutes. The ants are actually nesting in the rocks in my pots. Great to watch at flush times as they start carrying millions of eggs up the branches. They also nest in the insulating polystyrene blocks I use to keep the nute 'brains' off the concrete floor. I have to replace these regularly as they are burrowed into by the ants & used as nestin chambers. It gets so bad that last grow I had shit loads of ants that had gotten stuck to the resin glands & met their sticky ends (looked like outdoor buds!) they go 'pop' when ya smoke 'em & taste a bit shite!

I figure they aren't too much of a problem as my plants do OK but I don't like findin 'em in my stash!

Every new grow I obviously get rid of 'em but they always come back shortly after I put a new load in. I have tried alsorts but don't like the idea of poison as they are nestin in the rootball & it may harm the plants. Someone suggested they may be farming aphids but I definitely do not have any aphids. Maybe they keep whitefly & spider mites & krip away & are a good thing. Maybe they are mut'ants' that just wanna get high?

 

Anyone shed some light on this?

 

Laterz...

Budsta

Edited February 1, 2003 by budsta

[Ferre]

Hi budsta there's a few predator bugs that you can set loose on them ants, I don't know if you have them in Australia, but here's a few;

 

there's the Crab spider :

 

http://ant.edb.miyakyo-u.ac.jp/INTRODUCTION/Gakken79/Page_15/fig6L.jpg

 

the Ant Lion :

 

http://ant.edb.miyakyo-u.ac.jp/INTRODUCTION/Gakken79/Page_14/fig3.jpg

 

the Tiger Beetle :

 

http://ant.edb.miyakyo-u.ac.jp/INTRODUCTION/Gakken79/Page_15/fig4L.jpg

 

or the Assasin Bug :

 

http://www.uky.edu/Agriculture/IPM/sponsprj/county00/assasin.jpg

 

[budsta]

Cheers for the info tboat.

Not sure if any of those are native Aussie bugs but will look into it.

I think I've seen crab spiders or similar around but I would need thousands of 'em to ward of my ant infestation surely?

I'd hate to introduce something that was worse than the original problem eg: the cane toad was introduced to kill the sugar beetle in Queensland.

 

Laterz...

 

Budsta

[Tom]

Hey budsta, another way to get rid of them is to submerge the pot in water for an hour or too, this will drown the ants before they have time to worry about moving the eggs and provide the plants with a temporary organic food source. While all the plants are out of the grow room you will have a chance to wipe out the rest of them, get some ant rid or similar and use it around the outside of your room and hit the inside with a surface spray in the area that they are entering.

 

http://www.gamers-forums.com/smilies/contrib/ruinkai/coolgleamA.gif http://64.207.13.28/mysmilies/otn/glasses/smokin.gif

[pipeman]

I think Tom's got the right idea. also Ant rid is meant to kill off the whole nest. So maybe take a short break between grows and try this in an effort to kill off the main nest wherever that is.