Ants in my pants

I have a gold crest in a planter and it is dying. I have seen ants on the pot. Despite my watering it the ants won't leave. So they have killed the plant.

 

Or it could died from overwatering.

 

The soil always seems bone dry and very fine. It has got too big now and needs replacing so I won't miss it. When I remove it from the planter I will have a good look. But there are ants milling around.

 

In pots I use a insecticide at spray strength and flood the pot, with a saucer underneath to let it soak for an hour or so.
I have no problem with ants but they do plants no favours when they nest in pots.

 

They arrive around this time every year, and it feels like there's more and more of them, probably due to climate change. If the next is destroyed by the nippon, would they still spring up elsewhere, and if so, not as strong one would think.

Spraying on allotment might not be a good idea, also there's lot of wild flowers and good insects.

Here in Italian mountains, it's been quite wet the last few weeks.... I have tried watering in the past, however I didn't feel it made much difference. Perhaps I would have noticed if I had not..

 

@Obelix-Vendée can advise on ant deterrant for containers/small spaces - not a "killer" but a
"mover on".
Not sure it's possible to do much if you are finding them in such abundance @wcndave as Ants will take advantage of anywhere suitable. The recent weather patterns don't help either I would imagine.

 

@wcndave, the way Nippon works is some ants ingest it and then take it back to the colony. Whether it would kill the whole thing, I'm not sure. It might depend on the size. Survivors might set up elsewhere. I don't really think it is a solution for anything more than a small nest really.

 

Thanks for your thoughts all!

 

Ants in pots indicate that you have not been watering adequately and the compost is bone dry. Try putting the pot in a saucer to help retain water and let it soak into the compost as, once it gets dry enough for ants to invade it will be very porous and water will just run thru. All their little tunnels also leave plant roots hanging in air so they dry out even faster and the plant is weakened and can die.

If you have ants in your borders then your soil is very dry and you need to think about mulching it to retain moisture - but wait till you've had a thoroughly wet period so you don't trap in dryness.

I don't see the point of trying to kill off ants in gardens. It would be expensive and not wholly effective so a waste. There are birds that eat them so poison is a bad idea.

In pots and round doorways you can encourage them to move on by using smells that repel them. A small bottle of essential oil of cloves (from the health store or pharmacy) mixed into 5 litres of water and poured into pots will make the ants move on. Pouring it over doorsteps also helps if they're coming into the house and you can put a few drops on door mats. Planting Pennyroyal near outside doors is supposed to help but I've never tried it.

 

I once watched a Youtube video where a man showed how to get rid of an ants' nest by digging up one ants' nest and dumping it on top of another ants' nest. I can't remember how he explained it worked, but it seems it did. They either attack each other or run away from each other.

I haven't tried it myself.

 

Ants do fight and generally don't transfer from one nest to another without tensions, so I expect that caused a war. Plus, nests are delicate things with all sorts of connecting tunnels and cavities. If those collapse, it will no longer be viable as home. A bit like bombing a block of flats really.

Ant colonies are very complicated ecosystems. A small amount of disruption can be recovered from, and they are excellent at DIY and general maintenance, but large scale assaults and relocations are much harder for them to navigate.