On Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:16:32 -0500, "Douglas R. Hortvet, Jr."
wrote:

Thanks for the reply.

Issues with 'personal pronouns and paragraphs' - what does that mean?

It means you get an 'F' in English. We all make mistakes, I'm the
Queen of the Run On sentence; but you make no effort to communicate
pleasantly and effectively. Your writing makes you sound like a
petulant 2 year old.

'Issues' is such an overused and non-specifc term to be essentially meaningless, IMO.

And if you claim that's true, you can avoid any and all of your
issues. Got it. It would appear you approach problem solving in your
garden the same way.


When I called the local gardening guru's radio program - he acknowledge that ants can
devastate a plants root system. Figure he knows more than I about such things.

He acknowledged, as in, it wasn't his idea? As in, you had already
decided that the ants were the problem, and pushed that idea? What
else did he suggest might be the problem?


There is another gardenia in a pot not 5' away and has no problem at all - both are
watered the same, and received the same fertilizer and sulphur treatment.

Were you planning on telling us what fertilizer you used or what form
of sulphur?

The one with the problem had evidence of a blackness on the leaves - black sooty mold -
that was removed with strong water spray.

And it never occurred to you that the mold was the key to what was
wrong with your gardenia? Stop focusing on ants destroying the roots
and consider the ant/aphid connection I suggested in my last post. If
you have ants and sooty mold, you most likely have aphids. If there
are no aphids, there is some kind of insect that produces honeydew
feeding on your gardenia. I lean towards aphids being the problem,
though, because I so often see ants herding and protecting aphids on
plants around here.


Is it your experience that ants cannot damage a plants root system?

It is my experience that ants do not damage roots. And lord knows
I've had tons of ants through here. When I moved into this house fire
ants were a terrible problem. Now there is a mega colony of Argentine
ants in this area, so I've had to learn to live with ants. I try and
be positive. The positive thing is that they wipe out fire ants and
take out a lot of termites. See?


Want to do what is necessary to ensure the plant does not die - the blooms have been large
and very pleasantly fragrant.


A simple soap spray will kill aphids, or you can try Neem. Neem should
also make the ants very unhappy, although it probably would not kill
the whole mound.


Penelope


--
"Maybe you'd like to ask the Wizard for a heart."
"ElissaAnn"