ᐉ How to get rid of ants in cucumbers, folk remedies, preparations

Help and sabotage of ants in borage

Therefore, if ants appear, then first of all, before starting to fight them in different ways, you need to take into account all the advantages and disadvantages of breeding these insects in the beds and in the greenhouse with cucumbers.

Therefore, the benefit:

Loosening the soil. When building anthills, these insects loosen the top layer of soil, while a lot of air flows to the roots of the plants and oxygen saturation occurs.
Destruction of harmful insects. Ants are good garden cleaners, cleaning it from spider mites, larvae and caterpillars of other pests.
Enrichment of the soil with useful microelements (potassium, nitrogen), as well as humus. This occurs due to the vital functions of the ant colony.

Negative aspects of finding ants in a plot with cucumbers:

Ants eat cucumbers (seeds and seedlings), causing their death.
Depletion of plants due to aphids. For the life of ants, glucose is necessary and for this they make themselves an animal - aphids, with which they “milk” this substance.
The pasture for aphids is the plants from which they consume “vital” juices.
Painful ant bites. In defense, the ant can bite painfully, injecting its acid, which causes an acute allergy. Children and people prone to various allergic reactions can especially suffer from bites.

If, after weighing all the pros and cons, you decide to get rid of ants in borage, then you need to choose ways to combat them.

Preventive measures

It is also recommended to deeply loosen the soil every autumn and destroy weeds and aphids in the area, since the latter is a treat for ants, and therefore they migrate after it.

Before planting crops, you need to treat the greenhouse with a special solution of flax and soda. These ingredients are mixed with water and poured into greenhouses in an amount of 5 liters of liquid per square meter. m. After such prevention, the ants must move to another place of residence.

In some cases, for prevention, you can sprinkle ant holes with lime. In each specific case, you need to choose those drugs that will work effectively depending on external conditions

But it is also important to treat the seeds before planting.

As you can see, ants can be quite a serious problem on the site, often causing the destruction of all vegetation. Therefore, you need to get rid of ants at the same moment as soon as they appear in the garden. You can choose any method of control, the main thing is that the greenhouse does not become a habitat for ants or aphids.

Source

To prevent these pests from appearing on the site, you need to remove boards, logs and other rubbish from it, since this is where the insects choose a place to build their home. Another peculiarity is that ants can live simultaneously throughout the entire territory of the site, for example, in one place to feed, and in another to make a place for living or breeding offspring.

It is also recommended to deeply loosen the soil every autumn and destroy weeds and aphids in the area, since the latter is a treat for ants, and therefore they migrate after it.

In some cases, for prevention, you can sprinkle ant holes with lime. In each specific case, you need to choose those drugs that will work effectively depending on external conditions

But it is also important to treat the seeds before planting.

You will learn more about how to get rid of ants on cucumbers in the following video.

Ants in the greenhouse and in the garden: what to do

There are many methods that can be effective in controlling these insects. Each gardener chooses his own option, but one should not forget that the effectiveness of any method may be different.

All these means are divided into a number of categories: mechanical, using chemicals, combined and the use of industrial toxic drugs.

Mechanical methods

To remove ants from a cucumber bed using a physical method, you will first need to find their locations. These insects do not like dark areas; they are happy to dig tunnels for their nest in a place unprotected from the sun under the leaves of plants.

If the search for the anthill is successful, then it should be carefully picked up with a shovel, transferred to a suitable container along with the queen and eggs, and removed from the cucumber bed.

A good method is to water the nest with boiling water, kerosene, a decoction of tomato leaves, sprinkle with ash, quicklime or soda ash. Many gardeners, in order to save cucumber seedlings, water them with soda water, but you need to be quite careful with this method, since soda can burn young plants. The best solution would be to use a solution of soda with the addition of linseed oil before planting cucumbers, spilling the prepared soil.

Ants do not much prefer to group in well-groomed areas, so it is recommended to loosen the soil as often as possible, and in spring and autumn to carefully dig up the garden. Very often, folk remedies such as covering the anthill with millet or semolina are used. What is strange, but they bring results - the insects leave and do not return.

Folk remedies for ants

Chemicals are mainly used to prepare various baits that will help get rid of ants in the cucumber bed. These include:

Use of boric acid. It is mixed with sugar or honey and placed in a small container on ant paths. But you need to make sure that the ants can get to it, but children and pets cannot.
Baits impregnated with borax and yeast. These toxic components can be mixed with any sweet substance (honey, jam, molasses), as well as with a boiled egg or minced meat. It is known that ants are omnivorous insects, and they will happily feast on poisoned baits.
It is necessary to remove aphids from the greenhouse with cucumbers. The ants will be deprived of their main source of food and will leave the area. As for chemicals against aphids, spraying cucumbers with Karbofos gives good results.
Use of odors. Ants are afraid of the smell of such plants and seasonings: cinnamon, garlic, onion, mustard, wormwood, bay leaf, mint, and elderberry. You can plant mustard and garlic next to the cucumbers, and then the ants will avoid such an area.
To protect the sown cucumber seeds from ants, you need to pour black pepper into the holes with the seeds, or better yet, along with red hot pepper.

"Old-fashioned" methods, time-tested

You can also work with ants using the “wedge by wedge” method. If you cannot drive out black ants, you can scare them away with large red ones. Red forest ants love to destroy the nests of black ones and steal eggs from there.

If it so happens that your area with a greenhouse is located right next to a forest belt, then just find forest orderlies there, take some earth from the anthill and make a path like this all the way to the greenhouse.

Soon you will see how a whole river runs, takes white eggs from your hearth of black ants, and back. Quite an effective solution. True, this method does not always help, and sometimes both red and black people peacefully coexist with each other. There are also less risky “old-fashioned” methods of dealing with ants. The most effective is boric acid:

And the following methods: Fill a container with 10 liters of water, pour in two glasses of vegetable oil and the cheapest shampoo, add a bottle of vinegar and mix well. In the place of the largest concentration of insects, we pierce a hole with a peg and pour this mixture into it with a spray bottle. Immediately cover with film for three days. If you have enough patience, you can lure ants into a jar with leftover jam.

In one visit, many comrades will gather there, although not the entire colony, naturally. But it’s worth it a couple of times – the number of pests will decrease while you look for the main effective method of control.

Another old-fashioned method is a mixture of brewer’s yeast and honey. Little sweet tooths will eat up, and the remnants of the survivors will go home. Here's how to prepare meat bait for ants: mix 2 tablespoons of minced meat with 0.5 tsp. boric acid.

Divide this mixture into many small balls and spread along visible ant paths. It is only important that this poison is not accidentally eaten by one of your pets, and therefore during these days always close the door to the greenhouse.

Ants also don’t like certain smells. Therefore, spread out the remains of coffee grounds, cinnamon, mint, elderberry and tansy leaves, and cut garlic arrows for them in the greenhouse beds. Mechanical methods are also important in the fight against ants. Try to constantly loosen the soil in which there are insects.

Combined options for destroying an anthill

These include mechanical methods in half with a chemical analogue. You can put a dark cloth with sugar sprinkled on it or soaked in plenty of molasses in a bucket and place it near the ant’s nest. Soon the queen and her family will move into this container, and after that it will be possible to safely take her outside the site.

To protect cucumbers from ants, you can spray them with mustard solution, which is infused for three days. Also, these insects can be repelled by simply mustard powder scattered in their path.

There is another effective way to remove ants from a greenhouse with cucumbers: take 2 cups of vinegar, vegetable oil and shampoo for 10 liters of water, stir well and pour into the ant nest, and then cover with dark oilcloth. Within a week, the “undesirable” neighbors will leave the greenhouse.

Repellents

The easiest and safest way to protect cucumber beds from ants is to repel insects with a pungent odor. They do not like the aroma of plants such as:

garlic;
tomatoes;
parsley;
onion;
mustard;
mint;
tansy;
sagebrush;
marigold;
laurel;
anise;
valerian;
chamomile.

If you plant them near a cucumber bed, the ants will lose all interest in vegetables. Some people simply scatter the foliage of the listed plants between the cucumber bushes, this also has a positive effect.

Industrial poisonous drugs

In the case when almost all options have been tried, and the ants in the greenhouse with cucumbers continue their harmful activities, then it is worth resorting to more radical measures - industrial pesticides.

The most commonly used drugs are the main component of which is diazinon (a highly active organophosphorus chemical compound), which causes damage to the nervous system in insects and, as a result, paralysis. Such drugs include “Thunder - 2”, “Muracid”, and also “Anteater”.

There are many different ways to get rid of these insects, and if ants appear in cucumbers on your site, experienced gardeners and time will tell you how to get rid of them.

Fighting ants in a cucumber bed

Many of us are familiar with insects such as ants. Moreover, these individuals are practically the most numerous on the entire planet. Of course, they also have great benefits. They fight various harmful insects by feeding on them and their larvae. They also loosen the top layer of soil well which, thanks to these actions, is perfectly enriched with useful substances and oxygen.

But still, these useful workers in nature can cause great and even enormous damage to the entire garden and the plants growing in it. Because they contain and even protect insects such as aphids, which are simply very harmful and destructive for all green plantings in the garden. Where ants are found, the soil becomes acidic.

And besides, they often harm young plants by gnawing off their young shoots and flowers. And not only during the growth of all crops, especially cucumbers.

Ants are very dangerous for cucumbers because they can simply eat the seeds that you planted in the soil. But even if you have secured the sowing of the seeds and sprinkled the holes with them with red or black pepper, they can attack the already sprouted sprouts and devour them. In order to protect young seedlings from such pests, many gardeners make beds with onions or garlic next to the cucumbers, contact with which the ants try to avoid.

But if you nevertheless notice that more and more ants begin to appear on your site every day, then you simply need to start fighting them. And the sooner the better. Of course, there are many time-tested methods and means for this fight. And of course, their effectiveness varies.

There is a chemical method, folk and mechanical.

Chemical method

This is when they use special preparations that are sold in gardening stores. But they are most often resorted to when other methods have not brought the desired result. Such substances contain components that will harm the entire nervous system of the insect and lead to paralysis. But many experienced gardeners still try not to bring the situation to such a state that they do not have to resort to such extreme measures.

Because these are, after all, pesticides that remain in the soil for a long time. And fruits also contain them. And when using some of these drugs, the plants themselves may suffer.

Traditional methods

Most gardeners use it because these methods are much safer compared to the same chemical ones.

For example, if cucumbers are planted in barrels, then plants such as bay leaves, mint, garlic, and elderberry can be placed around each barrel. Ants cannot stand these plants, so they will be blocked from approaching the cucumbers, and you will successfully reap a good and healthy harvest.

Preparing the soil itself before planting also helps a lot against ants. When the ground is dug up to form cucumber beds, wood ash or quicklime is added to it. For cucumbers this will serve as an excellent fertilizer, but ants will not even want to come close to this place. Not to mention about living there. But even if for some reason you didn’t have time to prepare the soil in advance, you don’t need to be upset. You can later just regularly sprinkle a thin layer of the soil in the holes. Because ash on the ground is a very serious barrier for these six-legged animals.

Growing cucumbers in a greenhouse

It is recommended to sow cucumber seeds for seedlings for greenhouses in late winter - early spring. To do this, you need to use light crumbly soil and choose a room with a high temperature. Under these conditions, it is possible to achieve rapid germination and emergence of sprouts. After a month, full-fledged seedlings are usually formed, ready for planting in the greenhouse.

Caring for cucumbers in greenhouse conditions involves watering, fertilizing with organic and mineral fertilizers, adjusting temperature and humidity, shaping the bush, etc. An important aspect of cultivating a crop in a greenhouse is its protection from diseases, weeds and pests. Very dangerous representatives of the latter category are ants. The question of whether ants can eat cucumber seedlings can be answered positively. Moreover, they can destroy an adult seedling.

Growing cucumbers in a greenhouse

Damage from ants to cucumbers

In small numbers in a greenhouse, ants perform a number of useful functions: loosen the soil, destroy ticks and other pests. However, these insects have a tendency to multiply in greenhouse conditions at incredible speed, occupying more and more space with their colonies. As a result, this leads to the following negative consequences for plants:

Insects have the ability to release specific substances into the soil that increase soil acidity. This is extremely harmful for most cultivated plants, including cucumber, which prefers moderately acidic soils.
Ants need a large amount of sugars to maintain full functioning, as a result of which insects can spread a significant number of aphids in the greenhouse. And this pest causes serious damage to cucumbers.
Ants live not only inside the greenhouse, but also outside it. From open areas, they can bring weed seeds into the greenhouse, which will germinate and interfere with the normal growth of cucumbers and other crops.
Ants devour seedlings and seed material of cucumbers, causing their death.
Insects are able to attach themselves to adult, fully formed plants and suck out the juices from them, disrupting the vital activity of the crop.
Pests establish their anthills in the middle of greenhouses, between cultivated plants, preventing them from fully developing.

Important: in addition to damaging cucumbers, ants can also harm humans by biting them. Insect bites are very painful and can provoke allergic reactions.

Pest prevention

To protect cucumber crops from pest attacks and prevent the appearance of ant nests in the greenhouse, you must:

Remove trash, boards and other unnecessary things that litter the space from the greenhouse. It is under garbage heaps that ants prefer to make their home. It must be taken into account that insects are able to inhabit several areas: feed in one place, breed in another. Therefore, the entire soil surface of the greenhouse must remain clean.
Every fall, loosen the soil, remove weeds, and fight aphids.
Before planting cucumbers, you should treat the soil with an aqueous soda-flax solution. For 1 m2 of area take 5 liters of product.
To prevent the appearance of ant nests, add lime to the soil under the cucumbers.
Before sowing, it is important to treat cucumber seeds with drugs that help prevent insect attacks.

Ants in cucumbers: how to get rid of them

Ants in cucumbers

At the first signs of the appearance of insects in the greenhouse, it is necessary to take measures as quickly as possible to remove them. In this case, mechanical, chemical methods, folk remedies and other methods of pest control are used. Ants in a garden with cucumbers: what to do?

Mechanical methods

If ants appear on cucumbers in a greenhouse, how to fight them? First of all, it is recommended to resort to mechanical methods. They are the simplest, least expensive and environmentally friendly.

The most basic method can be used if an anthill has been discovered. The pests' home is picked up with a shovel and carefully taken outside the greenhouse.

Important! Every year it is necessary to thoroughly dig up the soil in the greenhouse. This contributes to the destruction of both anthills and their egg clutches.

The effectiveness of this measure can be increased if, after digging, the soil is sprinkled with wood ash. If it is impossible to use it, you can resort to using baking soda.