"ant" wrote in message
Sigh. Again. Many of the trees I've planted (several hundred so far)
over
the past 13 years or so are covered in scale/sticky/sooty stuff, and
every
struggling tree is covered in ants. If a tree looks "clean", but
later has
ants walking all over it, it invariably ends up with this disease on
it, and
suffers a set back. I never knew what the connection was with ants,
but knew
that ants meant the tree was in for it.

I can understand why you are sighing as I'm sitting here doing the
same thing.

I'd like to know, after you nuke all the ants on your property and get
rid of them, do you think the scale and sooty mould will automatically
disappear?

Some trees that were doing well, now are dead.

That isn't surprising as you clearly have a problem, but is it the
ants or are there other underlying problems?

This area seems to have a lot of ants, and I think there are
termites here
too.

Not long ago you told me of a property down the hill below you and
which you overlook. I'm fairly sure I know that place (is it on a
corner with a dam at the bottom of the hill and asmall bareish paddock
right on the corner?) If it is that place then I'd have to say that
it shines like a beacon in an otherwise relatively barren landscape.

You wrote about how well the trees there had done and the care the
owners took to grow those trees and just how well their trees had
grown. Do the ants and termites in your area stay within the bounds
of your property or does the "area" having lots of ants mean that the
ants occur beyond your property line? Does the well treed property
have ants? If they don't have ants and termites there now, did they
ever? What care do they give to their trees that you don't (or can't)
give to yours? Did they nuke all the ants or did they do something
else that made the trees grow so that they look so strong and healthy?
Do they have bird life that you don't? Do they feed and water their
trees? Do they grow different trees to you? In short, why can they
do it but you can't?

You say "many" of your trees have scale. Is it one species that does
or is it a mix of all the trees?