tomatoes and ants!

[growingkasbar]

My tomatoe plants have been quietly growing and minding their own business in a grow bag at the bottom of the garden for about 4 days now. I have been out to water them, each day (and say hello ). When i went out there tonight i saw loads of ants crawling on the grow bag i drown them (unintentionally) when i watered the plants but now im wondering if i need to do something propperly about it. Will they be munching my plants or would ants just like to look and not touch?

[teakdesk]

If you water a grow-bag each day at this early stage in the season you could be over-watering and stopping roots from growing and even rotting the roots that are there. How big are the plants?

I leave ants and they have done no harm.

[growingkasbar]

they are about 15 - 20 cm tall.

[Redpepper]

Ants don't really do damage to tomatoes, but they can sometimes farm ahpids. You might like to have a look for little green aphids on your toms. If you find some, you'll need to pick them off or spray the plants with aphidbugkiller and move the growbag to another position temporarily until the aphids and ants have gone.

Only water them when the soil just below the surface feels dry. Otherwise there's a chance you can overwater and kill them off!

[bramble]

You can buy ant powder in the garden centre. I sprinkle it on the staging and its very effective.

[Bagpuss]

At my mum's recommendation I've brought two Nippon trays, rather than suffer the mess on the patio of the powder. The packs contain two, round trays (with a lid) and a tube of Nippon gel. You squeeze the gel into the tray, poke through the pre-marked holes. The ants are attracted to the gel and take it back to the nest - you do need to keep topping up the gel as they do seem to get through an awful lot. Far less messy than the powder and (touch wood) has been very effective for me. Hope this helps

[mrshopeful]

We started getting ants in our conservatory this week so after some googling and finding advice on here, last night I sprinkled some polenta where I think they're getting in. Apparantly they take it back to the queen who eats it and explodes it then takes a couple of days for all the worker ants to die off. I'll try and remember to update this to let you know if it worked

[growingkasbar]

well i did think i mite be over watering my toms,so i didnt bother with them yesterday. today when i went out to water them the ants had all gone! yay i guess they found a tastier snack.