If it wasn't for those pesky ants ...

Seems my slug rant struck a chord with lots of you, as anything on this theme usually does. There's always some gardener's enemy for us to lie awake at night plotting to eradicate (or is that just me?). My friend Lisa is battling slugs and cats in her garden, investing in lion dung at great expense to see off the latter. The bad news is it doesn't look as if it works (do let me know if it has worked for you so I can give Lisa hope).

I suggested grapefruit halves as slug traps but that hasn't worked for her so far. Meanwhile Trev is "nuking" slugs on his veg plot by all manner of means. i told him about the Perrone-patented slug sleeve for his squash and beans, and he's giving it a go ...

Meanwhile the slugs on my patch seem to have beat a (no doubt temporary) retreat in the face of an array of tactics: nematodes, Perrone-patented slug sleeves, liberally applied coffee grounds and nighttime slug patrols. It seems the Slug Buggers PR people are keen for some publicity (they added a Q&A to the comments on my last post which I'll leave up as some people may find it informative) but I'd like to hear from anyone who can testify whether they actually work. And if they do, where do the slugs go?

My personal pest battle has moved to ants, an utterly different proposition. When I moved my wormery outside for the summer, black ants took up residence. They then began to expand their territory inch by inch until it included my kitchen, accessed by a tiny hole in the skirting board; god knows how they got from the outside to there. They thought the kitchen caddy filled with veg peelings on my worktop was the ant equivalent of a roadside burger bar. I sought advice from Allan Shepherd, who knows about these things, and apparently the worms won't be bothered by the ants.

He'd read somewhere that a good way of stopping ants getting into the Can'o'Worms in the first place is to place the wormery's legs in containers of water about one half to three quarters full. Keep the containers and water clean of debris so there are no bridges for the ants to cross. Now I just need to figure out how to get the ants that are in there, out, if you catch my drift. I might just dump the top two layers (which aren't very wormy) into my new beehive composter (yes I have fallen for the trend) when it arrives and hope the ants disperse from there.

Allan also said ants won't eucalyptus oil, lemon juice, lemon scented oil and talcum powder, while someone commented on his own blog that paprika was a good ant deterrent. Of course the old fashioned approach - provided you don't mind a few hundred tiny deaths on your conscience - is boiling water - I employed this method on a couple of red ant nests established in my lawn recently. Kills the grass too, but this grows back quickly. This doesn't work when the ants are living among your prize plants though, so the paprika option might come into play then.

Comments

[Liz]

I've grown to accept that ants are inevitable in my wormery in the summer months. It does work to stand the legs in bowls of water but if it's hot the water soon evaporates and then the ants are straight back in there. My only tactic is to move the whole wormery to the end of the garden during the warmer months to try and stop the ants making unwanted visits to my kitchen, then they come back up to the house in winter so that they don't get too cold. I've found they don't need to come inside once the wormery is in full working order - they just burrow into the middle to keep warm and we wrap them in towels on the odd occasion when we get a very cold night. You'll probably notice from this post that our worms are the most pampered members of the family...

[Mel]

I'm also looking for a way get rid of ants - I've got both red and black ants on my allotment, and just the thought of them makes my skin crawl! I spotted an ant nematode at Wiggly Wigglers recently, but I'd like to know how well it performs before I commit to spending so much.

On the slug issue, I'm using a slug buggers type product at the moment (GrowAid Slug Gone), and it does seem to be working - my artichoke & asparagus pea seedlings haven't been eaten yet (at least not by the slugs - the pigeons seem to be having a go, though!) It also seems like it might be a good alternative to cabbage collars, given the way it felts when wet.

Mel

[Natalie El-Barrawi]

Another tip for Anti-ant wormery entry is to smear vasoline around each leg in a thick band. I can't remember where I got this tip but I haven't seen any ants since I tried it.
You have to re-apply from time to time but It's less fiddly than toping up the dishes of water.
The wormery may be on the dry side, ants won't like the damp so perhaps a sprinkle of water may encourage them to exit.

[Charlotte]

For cats, I swear by my sprinkler scarecrow -- it's a sprinkler with a motion detector built in -- you can set it and leave it. I'd tried everything to get rid of the neighborhood cat, and it's the only thing that's worked. For ants in my lawn, I've had good success with diatomaceous earth -- dump a bunch on the anthill/upwelling -- I don't know that it kills them, I think they just move a bit. But as long as they're not in the vicinity of the lawn furniture, I'm cool with that.

[Another Mel]

I've just been visiting the Orkney islands & people there swear by leaving clear plastic bottles filled with water in between the plants to keep the cats and rabbits away. I haven't tried it myself.