Farm1 wrote:
"ant" wrote in message

Speaking of mongrel ants who bring nasties to things (like trees),
how can you slaughter large numbers of them? I have a larger
problem, with ants and sticky stuff and trees/bushes slowly
struggling against them.

As Len (rightly) mentioned, the ants come for the sticky stuff. There
will be some sort of bug on your trees which is causing the sticky
exudate.

What sort of trees and do they have sooty mould? Sooty mould looks
just like black soot.

gums, mainly. It's quite virulent. Some have the black yuck on them, other
have a sort of messy sticky stuff, and lots of ants. It's bloody annoying.
We've planted hundreds of trees over the years, and many are being smashed
into oblivion by this stuff. The trees I germinated from local gumnuts seem
particularly prone to this. The mannifera are the least prone.

--
ant
Don't try to email me;
I'm borrowing the spammer du jour's addy

"ant" wrote in message
...
Farm1 wrote:
"ant" wrote in message

Speaking of mongrel ants who bring nasties to things (like
trees),
how can you slaughter large numbers of them? I have a larger
problem, with ants and sticky stuff and trees/bushes slowly
struggling against them.

As Len (rightly) mentioned, the ants come for the sticky stuff.
There
will be some sort of bug on your trees which is causing the sticky
exudate.

What sort of trees and do they have sooty mould? Sooty mould
looks
just like black soot.

gums, mainly. It's quite virulent. Some have the black yuck on them,
other
have a sort of messy sticky stuff, and lots of ants. It's bloody
annoying.

Have a good close look at the trees. There will be some sort of bug
on them. Maybe a scale insect which looks like a flat scale that
clings very closely to the bark (I dont' know if mealybugs also grow
on trees???) You'll have trouble scraping the scale off with your
fingernail but you'll get goo on your nail when you do.

First step is to find out what sort of bug you have. I don't like
using any chemicals but I'm sure I used an agricultrual soap added to
a light white oil to get rid of a similar problem I had once.

g'day ant,

then you may want to figure how they get inside your home you do have
fly screen i imagine and then i guess the aphids need to be smart
enough to figure which room of the home you have the plants in.

when ever aphids and i don't discriminate come onto my idoor plants i
generally find that ants have visited.



On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 23:01:04 +1000, "ant"
wrote:
snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.gardenlen.com

gardenlen wrote:
g'day ant,

then you may want to figure how they get inside your home you do have
fly screen i imagine and then i guess the aphids need to be smart
enough to figure which room of the home you have the plants in.

when ever aphids and i don't discriminate come onto my idoor plants i
generally find that ants have visited.

I do get ants coming inside quite often. And I have a giant boston fern that
is very sticky, and is visited by ants! Doesn't seem to bother the fern at
all, but the floor underneath it gets sticky.


--
ant
Don't try to email me;
I'm borrowing the spammer du jour's addy

g'day ant,

they are very resourcefull, and yes they will bring mealy bugs and
scale onto your ferns.

if not dealt with the ferns is going to suffer heaps could all but
die.

with scale amd mealy you either have to pick them off or with mealies
using a cotton bud dipped in meth touch each bug, or cut the fern
right back and douse with a 1/4 rate mix of white oil, the worst with
mealies is if the ants colonise them on the roots of the plant it is
usually best to destry the plant, on plams i ahve manged to wash the
roots and all in a white oil mix but it realy knocks the plant about,
and not guranteed to be successful.

On Sun, 27 Aug 2006 12:34:36 +1000, "ant"
wrote:

snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.gardenlen.com

gardenlen wrote:

with scale amd mealy you either have to pick them off or with mealies
using a cotton bud dipped in meth touch each bug, or cut the fern
right back and douse with a 1/4 rate mix of white oil, the worst with
mealies is if the ants colonise them on the roots of the plant it is
usually best to destry the plant, on plams i ahve manged to wash the
roots and all in a white oil mix but it realy knocks the plant about,
and not guranteed to be successful.

I'll have to look at the fern again, but it's been like this for years. It
grows strongly and well (in my experience all these boston/fishbone ferns
do). However, all my palm trees have over the years had the same thing, the
stickyness, the ants. I could see something on them and attacked it again
and again with white oil, but never got anywhere. Must have been in the
roots, like you say. bloody ants! I don't feel guilty using dead ant on them
now.
--
ant
Don't try to email me;
I'm borrowing the spammer du jour's addy

"Jen" writes:
Yeah. I remember reading a book about ants, that said ants farm aphids and
milk them.

As the day heats up the ants will even shuffle the aphids around so that
they stay in the shade. Or so I've read.
--
John Savage (my news address is not valid for email)

"Dave -Turner" writes:
Today I noticed on my roses out the backyard that most of the bud sites are
covered in aphids. Now before i go on I should warn you that i put the "um"
in greenthumb and ive never tackled aphids before.

The usual advice is to spray the aphid colonies with soapy water. There's
a new product, Yates Nutrasoap, that can be used for this.

But for an immediate kill, mix 1 part metho with 3 parts water and
spray onto each bud. A few minutes later you can hose the dead aphids
off the plant and hey presto, you have your rose bug-free again.

If you get any on the ladybirds it will probably spell their end. The
mixture hasn't hurt anything I've tried it on, but test it on a few
buds before you try the whole lot if you're worried.
--
John Savage (my news address is not valid for email)

"Ms Leebee" wrote in message

Have never noticed ants in connection with my roses, but will keep a
sharper
lookout.

I've been wondering about this since Len and others kept reporting
that they have both on their roses.

I know that I do a fair amount of scratching around and managing the
soil and the plants under my roses and the ant nests in my garden are
all in drier places where I do not ever disturb them.

I had one bed which did have ants harvesting from scale insect from a
bush but as soon as I started working up that bed and improving the
soil and improved my general sol management practices, they
disappeared and haven't been back since.

How do you grow your roses and manage the soil?

John Savage wrote:
The usual advice is to spray the aphid colonies with soapy water. There's
a new product, Yates Nutrasoap, that can be used for this.

Err, you'll have more success by looking for "Naturasoap" I think! :-(
--
John Savage (my news address is not valid for email)

"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. :-(
--
John Savage (my news address is not valid for email)

g'day john,

hmmm interesting that one hey? i encourage the milk & sow thistles as
i find that the othe bugs would rather chew on them than me vege's
etc, also the thistles flower profusely and bring in the pollinators
for better tomato and capsicum pollination.

i haven't had a lot of problems with aphids in my gardens all the
same, i'm currently encouraging m.t's to grow in this garden for the
same above reasons, but will take note to see if i get more aphids or
not.

for me but i would be assuming that if the aphids are happy on the
m.t's then they may leave the other plants alone??? initially if i
found that i would be going along the lines of the m.t being a good
companion plant to have, wonder but??

currently but still only got aphids on one rose and as the m.t's are
new as well they most likley didn't over winter on them i'd be
thinking.

but suppose if the ants are doing the farming then again that could be
the lynch pin, or do suppsoe that the aphids move themselves from the
m.t to the roses say?



On Wed, 30 Aug 2006 00:27:06 GMT, John Savage
wrote:

snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.gardenlen.com

"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow wrote in message
...
"Ms Leebee" wrote in message

Have never noticed ants in connection with my roses, but will keep a
sharper
lookout.

I've been wondering about this since Len and others kept reporting
that they have both on their roses.

I know that I do a fair amount of scratching around and managing the
soil and the plants under my roses and the ant nests in my garden are
all in drier places where I do not ever disturb them.

I had one bed which did have ants harvesting from scale insect from a
bush but as soon as I started working up that bed and improving the
soil and improved my general sol management practices, they
disappeared and haven't been back since.

How do you grow your roses and manage the soil?

I always thought that cultivating the soil around a plant is bad for it's
roots. Anyway the ants that I have are coming from under the house and in
the mortar of the bricks.

Jen

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
Don't try to email me;
I'm borrowing the spammer du jour's addy

"Jen" wrote in message
"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow wrote in message
"Ms Leebee" wrote in
message

Have never noticed ants in connection with my roses, but will
keep a
sharper
lookout.

I've been wondering about this since Len and others kept reporting
that they have both on their roses.

I know that I do a fair amount of scratching around and managing
the
soil and the plants under my roses and the ant nests in my garden
are
all in drier places where I do not ever disturb them.

I had one bed which did have ants harvesting from scale insect
from a
bush but as soon as I started working up that bed and improving
the
soil and improved my general sol management practices, they
disappeared and haven't been back since.

How do you grow your roses and manage the soil?

I always thought that cultivating the soil around a plant is bad for
it's
roots.

Depends on how close you get.

Anyway the ants that I have are coming from under the house and in
the mortar of the bricks.

Yes that makes sense. A nice dry undisturbed spot rather than in an
area of cultivation.