The 6 legged farmers are busy again

Effician

We seem to have got the jump on the ants this year, usually they have deposited the aphids all over the small apple trees & honeysuckle by now but a few measures early on seem to have helped us.

To protect the apple tress we wrap duct tape sticky side out around the trunk ( a bit more difficult with the espalliad one as supports have to bedone as well) & dab with ant powder over the sticky bits.

The nettles we use for making nettle tea act as a good sacrificial plant as the ants deposit aphids on them , these are now chopped & soaking for feed in 3wks time.

Anyone else have ways of stopping these little critters from farming  your favourite plants?

Farway

I tend to rub out the aphids as I spot them and the blue tits help out. Doesn't alewys work my runners were black in the end, but it was aphids flying in not ants that put them there

Effician

The early season aphids on the fruit trees are non flyers but we did get airborne greenfly on the large container grown french beans, the ones on the beans were being managed by natural predators til the ants found them, that's when an explosion in numbers occured, when we stopped the ants was when normal order returned,

twopenny

Lots of greenfly. I usually use diluted washing up liquid in a spray being careful to only do buds and leaves so it doesn't impact on other insects.

I feed the birds and provide cover for them and from nothing to a garden with small birds - they help. Have to get a lot of bird food and stock up the bird bath.

Ants are a whole other story. When I recently moved in no one had lived here and the ants had eaten through the mortar and in the house! So it's been a long battle. I do use ant traps with gel. I don't like doing it but when they are in the lawn, beds, destroying the path it's them or me. Reduced them by starting as soon as I look for them scouting for nests and now it's who's quickest.

I let them forage on the green stuff but they don't do a good enough job.

Effician

An interesting article on the relationship between ants & aphids , 

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/plant-problems/pests/insects/controlling-aphids-and-ants.htm