In article , gardenlen0
@bigpond.com says...

g'day phorbin,

yes this is a common symbiotic relationship which i at least have
tried to tell other gardeners about only to be hit on by those who may
not know or think they know, dunno? no money in it for us. and the
suggested remedy is as cheap as cheap is.

Hi Len,

Ah well, some people think they're smarter than Mother Nature until she
proves them otherwise.

I've known for a very long time about ants' aphid ranching. Since grade
7 IIRC. I thought the parallel with human activity was really cool.

I'm pretty sure I've never seen any explicit mention of aphids being
sheltered underground; that was today's surprise and research project.

Around our place aphids don't usually survive in great numbers above
ground. Our predators deal with enough of them quickly. The last time we
had to hit aphids with a stream of water was four or five years ago when
there was a local ......plague. There was a crust of aphids on plants
all over the city. Even non-gardeners were remarking on it.

I know exactly which ant colony was guarding this herd and it's one of
our nastier varieties of ant (possibly the invasive Euro-import Myrmica
rubra). --We have two colonies of this type in inconvenient places but
they've not been too much trouble thus far and don't seem inclined to
build elsewhere.

I watch these things even when I'm not watching them.