hyacinth's Blog

April 2008

hyacinth's Blog

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Apr 30, 2008 | 8:26 PM PST
to stop ants from eating my flowers, i have put corn starch or corn meal. I have heard that the ants do not digest this well. When i thought about it at first, it seemd cruel, but how else? I love nature and bugs so it was a little hard for me. it is also for the sake of the daffodils, my second favourite flower.

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yardgranny6	Apr 30, 2008 \| 8:47 PM PST What kind of ants are these? big, black, small redish or brown? Maybe a pix will help some of us figure out why ants would eat plants. I began to wonder even more about your ants. And found this on GardenWeb as an answer to a similar question. I will second Civil84's observations regarding ants on yardlongs. The ants' presence on them is benign, unless the ants being attracted are carpenter ants (which can be destructive) or they are farming aphids. Something else is chewing the plants... beetles (Striped or Spotted Cucumber, Bean, or Colorado Potato) would be my first guess. Cucumber beetles are doing a number on my entire garden this year. All cowpeas (yardlongs are just a sub-species of cowpea) have pads on their flower stalks, one for each set of blossoms. These produce a substance that is very attractive to several types of insects; wasps, ladybugs - and ants. As for the eggplant... ants are not normally attracted to them, so I suspect that they are carrying aphids there. There is obviously some evolutionary reason for nectar production _outside_ the flower; perhaps for the symbiotic protective relationship with ants suggested by Civil, perhaps for some other organism in their native environment. The ants are certainly very protective of the plants. But on a side note, the wasps that feed there seem very docile; I have never been stung, even while harvesting. They appear to be intoxicated. Ladybug adults also feed from the pads, in large numbers. It has been mentioned on other threads how hard it is to keep ladybugs (especially released o Last edited by yardgranny6 on April 30th at 8:54 PM.

yardgranny6

Apr 30, 2008 | 8:47 PM PST
What kind of ants are these? big, black, small redish or brown? Maybe a pix will help some of us figure out why ants would eat plants.

I began to wonder even more about your ants. And found this on GardenWeb as an answer to a similar question.

I will second Civil84's observations regarding ants on yardlongs. The ants' presence on them is benign, unless the ants being attracted are carpenter ants (which can be destructive) or they are farming aphids.

Something else is chewing the plants... beetles (Striped or Spotted Cucumber, Bean, or Colorado Potato) would be my first guess. Cucumber beetles are doing a number on my entire garden this year.
All cowpeas (yardlongs are just a sub-species of cowpea) have pads on their flower stalks, one for each set of blossoms. These produce a substance that is very attractive to several types of insects; wasps, ladybugs - and ants.

As for the eggplant... ants are not normally attracted to them, so I suspect that they are carrying aphids there.

There is obviously some evolutionary reason for nectar production _outside_ the flower; perhaps for the symbiotic protective relationship with ants suggested by Civil, perhaps for some other organism in their native environment. The ants are certainly very protective of the plants.

But on a side note, the wasps that feed there seem very docile; I have never been stung, even while harvesting. They appear to be intoxicated.

Ladybug adults also feed from the pads, in large numbers. It has been mentioned on other threads how hard it is to keep ladybugs (especially released o

Last edited by yardgranny6 on April 30th at 8:54 PM.

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