"Jen" wrote in message
...
With all this talk of removing the ants to get rid of the aphids - Does
anyone have some good ways to get rid of them (the ants, that is)?

Jen

I use cabbage dust around the ant holes. Works wonders under the hills
hoist.
Inside I use honey & borax powder. We used to be over run in the kitchen
when we first moved in, took about 3 years to convince them the kitchen was
MY domain not their's.
Jim

"SG1" writes:
I use cabbage dust around the ant holes. Works wonders under the hills
hoist.
Inside I use honey & borax powder. We used to be over run in the kitchen
when we first moved in, took about 3 years to convince them the kitchen was
MY domain not their's.

There seem to be two broad categories of ants that you'll find in the
kitchen: those after sweet things such as sugar, honey, jam, etc., and
those after meat or fat. I expect the honey + borax lure will only get
the first ones. Those in the second category love cheese and bacon crumbs
from a pizza, but I found they wouldn't touch sugar or honey.

I do wonder whether there might be meat-loving ants in the garden that
go around collecting grubs off the cabbages, and aphids off radish
leaves, etc. Can anyone vouch for this? Maybe not all ants in the garden
are undesirable.
--
John Savage (my news address is not valid for email)

"John Savage" wrote in message

I do wonder whether there might be meat-loving ants in the garden
that
go around collecting grubs off the cabbages, and aphids off radish
leaves, etc. Can anyone vouch for this? Maybe not all ants in the
garden
are undesirable.

I used to do furniture making classes with a world wide expert on
ants. For some reason the Japanese are fascinated with ants and he
was always either being filmed or interviewed by them or asked to
Japan to talk about them Lord knows what the film crews thought of
some of the places he used to drag them off to.

Can't remember his surname now but he was Dr. Bob Something or other.
At lunch time we would always find some sort of ant and he would
instantly say: "It's a 'xxxx xxxx'" giving it's Latin name and then he
would either squash it because it was an introduced species or
carefully put it right back where we found it if it was a native ant.

Anyway, I know that I have at least 5 different types of ants in my
garden. I haven't a clue what they are except black, brown and blue.
They have never bothered me except when they have bitten me (rarely)
or done damage to anything that I can identify. In fact the big 1cm
long brown ants have been the most reliable forecasters of rain that
we can identify with the exception of the Black Cockatoos. When the
big brown ants start building up dam walls around the entrance to
their nests we know it is going to rain. I've never had any need to
poison ants outside but have had to do so in the kitchen.

g'day john,

i don't find any ant undesirable in the garden it is only those times
they bring in aphids etc.,. they have hteir part to play in recycling
in the garden eg.,. when we last lived in the 'burbs we would do the
torch safari and squish those snails and the ants would clean up the
dead critters. even termites in the garden are a benefit.

not sure about ants just try to live with them, but up in the bush we
had a lot of what i know as meat ants a fairly large ant, that created
food trails through the grass dunno how they did it? but they had
clear walkways to regular food sources, and they collected lots of
fallen bugs or whatever they could find but they still
harvested/farmed scale instect. so i would be guessing that most ants
will like sweets after the main meal huh chuckle?

an amazing ant to watch they where, if it was going to rain heavily
their food collecting activity was dramatically escalated and they
where far less tollerant of you getting in their road then the only
time i ahve ever been bitten by them, if the night was going to be
cold they would have the dark coloured stones on top of their nest to
gather heat so they could take them down and warm whatever part of the
nest they needed warming, then the opposite in summer they had the
lighter stones on top.

i've seen before when the ants are hurredly removing the aphids down
to the roots of the roses you can count on it raining heavily.



On Sat, 02 Sep 2006 11:56:48 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