Ants & fruit

TonyFella

Can't find much online but my crop of strawberries are starting to flower and the ants are back. Last year I tried soapy water and those ants boxes with poison in them nothing seamed to work an lost a lot of fruit and veg to them. Can anyone recommend how to get rid of them or what product is safe to use on fruit&veg?

Thank you

fiacha

You are unlucky Tony, my spud and veg beds thrived last year despite having two large colonies farming aphids on them.

They are amazing creatures and very resilient. Your only hope of controlling them is to keep putting the poison down. Sprinkle it along the paths you see them using. The worker ants on the surface will bring it down into the colony and pass it on to the rest while feeding / cleaning each other.

If they are the common garden "black ant" Lasius niger, there will be only one queen in the colony. So once she is dead, the workers will eventually die out.

It's a bit of a loosing battle to be honest. When the mated queens fly during the summer, they will spread out from other colonies in the area.

Ants can't resist a bit of honey water, so you could try burying some jam jars in your beds level with the soil. Put some honey & water mixture in the bottom. You will need to put a generous layer of olive oil or vaseline around the inside of the jar top. This will stop them climbing back out.

TonyFella

fiacha wrote: »

You are unlucky Tony, my spud and veg beds thrived last year despite having two large colonies farming aphids on them.

They are amazing creatures and very resilient. Your only hope of controlling them is to keep putting the poison down. Sprinkle it along the paths you see them using. The worker ants on the surface will bring it down into the colony and pass it on to the rest while feeding / cleaning each other.

If they are the common garden "black ant" Lasius niger, there will be only one queen in the colony. So once she is dead, the workers will eventually die out.

It's a bit of a loosing battle to be honest. When the mated queens fly during the summer, they will spread out from other colonies in the area.

Ants can't resist a bit of honey water, so you could try burying some jam jars in your beds level with the soil. Put some honey & water mixture in the bottom. You will need to put a generous layer of olive oil or vaseline around the inside of the jar top. This will stop them climbing back out.

I say there last year watching them work and they are impressive, They ate through 3 ant stations poisons and nothing happened. I lost half my fruit crop last year that's around 30 plants.

My veg beds are in raised beds using railway sleepers and they are living in it. Iv seen the powder but iv got kids and if it rains and goes into the bed it might damage what iv got in it as most ant killer says keep it away from edible food plants.

That jam pot sounds like it could work thank you for replying

macraignil

I'm not sure it is possible to get rid of ants from a garden completely. I have grown crops of fruit and vegetables with ants present and they have not damaged my crops. Ants collect material from your garden that could otherwise shelter more damaging pests and I think you should investigate if their is some other pest that has been causing you crops to fail. The jam pot idea I have seen used for killing wasps, but as you are only going to kill worker ants this will not work to remove ant hives that seem to be a problem for you. You may have created some shelter for ant colonies by making your raised beds so I would simply dig out the colonies of ants when you see them and leave birds eat what you have exposed with a fork or shovel. They might even eat the queen and removing shelter from the ants might discourage a new ant colony forming in the same place. Some plants attract pests more than others and I have noticed ants protecting aphids on roses. Maybe companion planting your vegetables with more sensitive plants like roses or basil might reduce the damage on your crop plants. To be honest I do not see the value of taking agresive action against ants as I have not seen them doing serious damage to my crops.

fiacha

The idea behind the honey trap is that you are only targeting the ants near your crops

I love having them around the garden. I even have a few colonies in the house (pets, not free range lol)