Ants

[The Germinator]

Hi all

Im in my first year of growing veg. I have a small patch for growing veg as the rest of the lottie is like a jungle. When weeding around my onions and carrots i noticed lots of red ants. Was wondering if this was good or bad. If its bad how do i stop them??

Thanks

[momol]

I tend to dislike having ants in my veggie bed because they will be protecting aphid (milking them and protecting them from any aphid predator). The calendula is suppose to drive away ants but I don't know how effective it is in practice.
Other trick to chase the ants away is by keeping the soil moist (by watering the colonized soil everyday), the ants will pack up and look for new house.

If you would like to use chemical antiants,it is very effective but I don't know if it is save to be use close to the veggies.
We use chemical antiants before as the ants nest under our back garden pavement (they kept digging the sands out and making the pavement uneven in level).

[Demeter]

A tip I got on here the other day was semolina.
Try this thread: http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...ans_17334.html
Don't know if it works yet as I've not been to check what's going on since we put the semolina down. Too rainy!

[silverfork]

I've got loads of ants both in my garden, where they farm aphids on my globe artichokes (in between the 'scales' of the globes, little bleeders!), and also on my allotment. I don't mind the ants, but it's the aphid farming i have a problem with. Reluctantly I have used 'Termin8' from Growing Success i think. It's supposed to be safe for organic gardening. Don't know what it's made of, but it does the job. Thanks for the tip, that thread is great... will try some of those more environmentally friendly ways.