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#31
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Aphids on my roses, time to wage war
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 |
#32
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Aphids on my roses, time to wage war
"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. |
#33
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Aphids on my roses, time to wage war
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 |
#34
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Aphids on my roses, time to wage war
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 |
#35
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Aphids on my roses, time to wage war
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 |
#36
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Aphids on my roses, time to wage war
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 |
#37
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Aphids on my roses, time to wage war
"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) |
#38
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Aphids on my roses, time to wage war
"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) |
#39
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Aphids on my roses, time to wage war
"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? |
#40
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Aphids on my roses, time to wage war
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) |
#41
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Aphids on my roses, time to wage war
"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) |
#42
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Aphids on my roses, time to wage war
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 |
#43
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Aphids on my roses, time to wage war
"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 |
#44
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Aphids on my roses, time to wage war
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 |
#45
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Aphids on my roses, time to wage war
"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. |
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