ants

[anoa0101]

summer has blown in with full force here in sunny Israel and i see some of my cacti are responding well to the heat and sun.
unfortunatly, some i noticed have an unwelcome visitor- black small ants. they are not many, nor do they seem borrowing in the soil. all my cacti are in seperate pots and i moved the ones with the ants farther from the other.
what can i do?
are they harmful?

thanks,
anoa

[templegatejohn]

Hi Anoa,

Ants themselves do not actually damage plants, but may introduce mealy bug or other aphids. In extreme cases nest building may disturb the roots.

If necessary use a powdered insecticide.

I envy you that sunshine, England is pretty miserable at the moment.

Cheers,
John

[ondy]

I hate ants....
I have had ant problems in the past with my plants. A few of them here and there is fine but if they start getting all over your plants and can be a real nuisance. Every spring it starts where I live. I think that the whole town is built on an ant hill. If the problem is not too bad I just use a basic ant and bug repellant that is intended to keep ants out of your house. I just spray it around the perimeter of the area where my plants are every couple weeks. That keeps most of them away. If the problem is bad I use ant traps that are meant to bait the ants with poison that kills the whole colony.

Andy

[anoa0101]

thanks John and Andy.

at least in England it rains and gets cool once in a while, here it's nothing but sun sun sun sun sun sun sun sun sun and more sun.

have a wonderful day,
anoa a.k.a Yoni (Yoo-Nee {yoo with a longer drawl on the O sound, or yoo as in "hey yoo, come here boy..." -it's a Heberw name drived from Yonatan, the biblical figure, king David's friend.
anyway, what's in a name?)

[ebaycactus]

Ants usually aren't that much of a problem to the cactus themselves, but watch out, because they will be a problem if they start biting you!