"brucef" wrote in message
...
I am cursed with ants this year. The house is bad enough, they get
into everything. But in the garden they kill stuff. They killed my
chinese tallow tree, they traumatised my quince. Now they are killing
my capsicums, and I had a great crop coming on.

Usually it is not actually the ants that do the damage, although in
the case of the quince they bore through the fruit leaving it
inedible. The problem is that the ants farm the aphids. My poor old
capsicum are wilting away to a shadow of their previous glory.

I have treated the trees by smearing this really sticky stuff around
the trunk that Dad uses for his olives. Does a great job but not
practical for capsicum plants. What should I do? Obviously I am
reluctant to use poisons on edible plants...

i believe that they won't (or can't) cross a nice thick wide smear of
vaseline on the plant stem - like the trees but on a smaller & less sticky
scale - if you try it could you let me know? (as you know, some gardening
advice is just rot because nobody's ever actually tested it!!!!)

i get ants & aphids on my broad beans, but the above seems like a bit too
much trouble (given the way broad beans are planted & grow closely in
blocks) so i've used derris dust. it does mostly work - it's just that
you'll get more later on, so it's a sort of temporary respite just to tide
you over until you can pull the plants for good.
kylie