THE THING WITH THE ANT

But let me tell you about the bees first..

Making  honey..

Bee party?

I am waging a serious war against fungi; will tell you more about that later, but because of the fungi I have a patch or two of half dead squash and marrows growing/dying. The thing is, I should pull them because they might be affecting other plants and they are just taking up space, the fruits are all rotting and odd shaped, but I do not have the hart to do this, because it is late winter with very few things flowering at the moment, so the bees just love the flowers. Then I realized that this is not a “waste of space” I am making honey, or helping the little bees to make honey to be more specific, so the fungi patch with flowers will have to stay for now.

Back to the ants…

I have been noticing that my lettuce, (planted directly into the ground) is just not coming up. This remained a mystery until this morning.  I honestly tried to take some photos, but you try taking photos of an ant and a lettuce seed with a 300mm lens….

Anyway I am watching for signs of something happening where there are suppose to be lettuce happening soon and what do I see? The ants are carrying away the lettuce seeds!

Now there is a whole new mystery here.  How did the seeds get out of the ground, they were planted after all, now they are being dragged off by ants! It is possible that some birds scratched them out, this is actually quite likely, or maybe the ants are digging it up themselves, is that possible?

As I said, I am mystified…. But for now all lettuce and other small seeds will be planted in trays.

On the positive side, these seeds cannot be to Monsatofied if the ants are going to eat them, hopefully they do not morph into Ninja Ants or something… then they will be carrying away pumpkins and not seeds! The seeds where harvested (by me) from plants in the garden, but those plants came from packets and in South Africa that simply means that Monsanto had a “finger in the packet” so to speak.

I am joking now, but seriously I am very grateful I noticed this “theft” this morning. This is why it is important to spend quality time with your garden, things can and do go wrong and the sooner you are aware the sooner you can fix the problem. 

I am also like mad mother hen with my milk mix, fighting the fungi, I want pumpkins and squash and more and this fungi thing will not take them away from me. I have tried other things, like the Bicarbonate of soda and Dish washing liquid, but I am not mad about the chemicals in the soap getting into the garden and the Bicarb is rather merciless, it kills the effected leaf on the spot and that makes we wonder what else it is killing. So, 100 ml milk with 900ml water (makes a liter) and there you go, spray spray… I read somewhere that you can plant in milk and that makes the plants immune to the fungi.  The problem is, with the price of milk this can become and expensive solution.