The Strawberries were doing very well until a few days ago and I was looking forward to a good crop. My plants are all poking out of black breatheable mulch with straw under the berries to hold them away from the damp earth and some time in the spring I took all the mulch off, added lots of manure compost and growmore and I thought they'd be fine. However, the plants at the lower end of the strip seem to be dwindling away - I'd thought it was just because it's been so dry, but today I lifted the black membrane and underneath each of the affected plants is a seething red ants nest.
The photos show the sad strawberry at the top and the "I'm all right mate" strawberry lower down. One plant has even given up entirely - there were loads of ant eggs under that one.
I have always had a lot of red ants on the allotment, indeed, I have often said that my allotment is a red ants nest infested by a few vegetables - but I was joking for goodness sake and I didn't mean it to get as bad as this! Today I puffed ant killer (very non organic) under the membrane and I'm hoping the ants will give up and let me harvest some strawberries. I'm not even sure if we can eat them now I've used the ant killer stuff which would be a pain.
I would really love to eradicate the little red b*****rds because not only do they kill off the plants I'm trying to grow, I am incredibly allergic to their bites and have to carry all sorts of potions in my bag to counteract the toxins.
Still, I picked enough strawberries before I applied the powder so at least we've got some for tonight. Cheesecake or ice-cream? Hmm. It's got to be good in case we don't get any more strawberries.
Happy gardening (ant-free I hope)
4 comments:
I've just posted this and realised how mad it looks with one word stuck up at the top like that but it wasn't shown that way in the preview and I don't know how to change it once I've posted! Apologies!
Oh dear, I hope you get the red ant problem sorted on your strawberries, what a nightmare! Love your blog, do you mind if I add it to my blog roll?
Kind regards
You're welcome to add my blog to your blog roll..er, what's a blogroll?
I've just been up to look at the strawberries and they still look pretty mixed. I've carried out an autopsy on one of the completely dead ones so I guess I'll post up my findings next time.
Whoops sorry! blog roll = blogs I read.
Having hens here, we dont have an ant problem, anything that moves gets munched!
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