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have discovered (finally) a use for green ants in the garden. saw a grub about an inch long running towards corn that had just germinated. on closer inspection it was being bitten continuously by a green ant. the ant didn't give up and the grub is no longer.

So is it safe to say that there is no good solution to ants in the garden? Because it looks like ants are munching on some of our plants. They are certainly building a vast network of tunnels, judging by what I've traced so far.

I'm a bit late on this one, but I once heard good ol' Bob Flowerdew give this advice, an it works.

Firstly the ants do harvest the greenfly/aphids etc for their honey dew. And yes if you kill one collony you get several more.

The trick is to entice the ants to something better. What you do is put a spoon of jam in a place near your infested plant. The ants now see this as "easy" food and go to it. But (and this is the clever bit) they then see the aphids as surplus "sweet" factories, and more as potential sources of food....so they attack and eat them!

Try it

Brilliant I will try it.

I'm so glad i logged in this morning!
Every year around this time we have ants trying to get in the house. I generally try to keep them out with peppermint essential oil, but i'm going to try the chilli and pepper now.

Being on light sandy soil, I regularly have problems with ants farming aphids on my apples and broad beans. They are so good at it that unless you're quick you have dieback to deal with, but a good blob of vasilene or something similar around the base of the stem will give them something to think about. I've also had problems with seed-stealing and tunnelling under the beds to such an extent that roots are affected. The worst thing though are the red ants - I'm not allergic but they inject formic acid when they bite so it hurts a bit and then itches for ages - children are worst affected.

The upshot of all this is that I have zero tolerance for red ants in the garden*, and won't put up with any ants in the veg beds or polytunnel - otherwise I leave them to it.

I've not tried the semolina thing, but we have a resident rat family so it's not a goer for now. Repeated flooding forces them to up sticks, but only generally by a few feet so it's good for pot plants and borders, but not a lot else. Usually I dig up the nest if I can get to it, and sprinkle pyrethrum powder when I see eggs. If I can't do that then the borax trick works well to kill the entire nest. Borax is getting harder to find now but you can buy it ready-made as "Nippon liquid" in the UK. I've never found that new ants move into the same spot as an eradicated nest - although I can see how that might work in time!

Oh, and there's an ant-killing nematode biocontroller available from the usual sources, but it's expensive enough to be only practical for small gardens.

*not that they seem to care, the bastards