John Savage wrote:
"ant" writes:
Farm1 wrote:
Ants don't "harvest" aphids but they may eat the honeydew. Rose
aphids don't live on other plants except perhaps pyracantha.

That's interesting, I didn't know that. I grow Basil inside, and
sometimes end up with horrible aphid infestations on it, nasty
green ones. I always assumed the sneaky buggers were coming up from
the roses.

I read where milk thistles, the common ones that budgies and other
caged birds love to nibble on, are a gardening menace. Aphids will
over-winter on thistles to then re-infest your valued plants next
spring. So I checked on the roots and under the lower leaves of
thistles during winter, and sure enough those regions were thick with
aphids. I also discovered that fennel is a winter host for aphids,
the winter foliage of some I inspected before eating was seen to be
chock-a-block covered with aphids. So there are two sources that you
might want to eliminate from your immediate surroundings to minimise
the chances of re-infestation by aphids.

Here I'd been encouraging thistles 'cause they at least provided some
green colour in a fallow winter bed of straw mulch. :-(

Bugger. I do have a lot of those big, squeaky thistles. Keep spraying them
and the pattersons, and am making inroads, but never quite get on top of
them. And there's a giant patch of both within sight of the house. And, it's
quite warm up here, compared with down in Canberra. Sigh. Now things are
becoming clearer. Well, I'm going to get the biggest, giantest bag of Borax
EVER and hit those mongrel ants for a start.

--
ant
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