Because I keep bees, bug spray is a no-no. I have found the carpenter ant nest, I can sprinkle it with cinnamon and confuse/lose them, but the aphids are on the new tender growth on my 2 year old grape vines. Dilute dish soap spray?
carpenter ants farming aphids organic solutions
Soap Spray is what I always use if necessary .
I also use dish soap spray with a dash of rubbing alcohol thrown in.
Like that dash of rubbing alcohol. Soap spray alone didn't work! Will try tomorrow.
aphids are really tuff, most stuff doesnt work on em, and they seem to be really bad this year.
squishing works. sulfur might, but it would burn my new growth on the grapes. Getting rid of the ant hill works well. I put cinnamon all over it on Sunday, will check today. The ants deliver and milk the aphids.
what about horrible whiteflies
Lantana draws whiteflies, plant a good smelly bush AWAY from where you dont wish to poison, suck em over and serve poison spray to the bush, wash and reapply as needed. As good as any remedy
Lantana also draws humming birds and butterflies, my beautiful tiger swallowtails adore lantana. And the hummingbirds do too.
For whiteflies and a few other nuisances I filled a 5 quart Pennzoil bottle with soapy water and set it near the grapevines. I will spray paint it another color on the outside. It is collecting some nice bugs. But not butterflies or hummers.
Do you have the old fashioned lantana or one of the newer cultivars? Whiteflies dont bother me as much as leaffootted bugs, but am agreed dont use it if you are raising birds, bees and butterflies.
I probably have one of the newer cultivars, "confetti" I think. it is pink, yellow and white. The Black and yellow swallowtails only visit my lantana, the other flowers seem to have no appeal.
I am going through Rodale's book on flower gardening problems, the pest section. It is a very good book. But the ant farm aphid thing, I'm going to have to polyurethane my beautiful stump if I want to keep it, or cut it up for firewood. I have some left over polyurethane, think preserved ants..
Or draws new ones since temps and water coming up
clear polyurethaned ant nest is artwork! My stump is so beautiful and the ants are tunneling inside it....
They can eat it to sawdust under the varnish, chuckl. NO need to worry about yellowing with age now!
never mind. Firewood it is. It was beautiful.
Awwww.
Changed my mind. Going to roll the trunk into my stock tank and drown the ants.
Hehehe. it get water logged and sink, shame you cant smoke em out. You need a petrified stump I think.
I think so too. Neighbor has a tree trimming business, piles and piles of wood chips and wood on his acre fenced lot. Carpenter ants and termites I have to watch out for.
any picture of these "leaf footed bugs?"
I haven't seen a leaf footed bug, but I did send my beautiful oak stump to the city dump last month, and have many fewer ant farms going.