Ants in my plants

[heatherbear10]

Hey all! I've got some healthy happy plants growing, but whenever I look up close I see little tiny light brown/clear colored ants crawling on my bud spikes. I've been watering daily, and fertilizing "weakly, weekly" with Orchid fertilizer, Superthrive, and Malathion Plus. The bugs go away, but then are back again a day or two later. Are they hurting my plants? If not, great, they can stay, but if so, how do I get rid of them without anything more harsh than I'm already using? Living in Central Florida it is the rainy season, so we've been getting almost daily rainstorms. Maybe this is washing the bugspray off???

[flaorchidfan]

Hey, living just a few miles down the road I have been geting the rain too. I replanted one of my orchids the other day and found a little nest of these little guys. Unike you, I am not too happy about them staying. I used a little Permethrin dust to do the job. I also use Ortho RosePride spray for little flies and mites/aphids. I felt if it was gentle enough for roses then it couldn't hurt. I have had great success with those and no fatalities with the orchids. I am by no means an expert but that has worked for me. If anybody else has better or safer ways please tell me too.

[heatherbear10]

Thanks! Where do you get the Permetrin? Home Depot or similar?

[flaorchidfan]

yep, or super Wal-mart or Kmart

[heatherbear10]

Great, thanks!

[jerrymeola]

To answer your question about whether they harm a plant the answer is NO. These small brown ants eat the 'honey sap' the plant excretes especially on new buds. It does not harm the plant or the flowers. I leave them in my pots unless they are coming indoors where my wife hates ants.

[Pconch]

thats good to know... I would usually just blow cigarette smoke on them until they fell off the buds while my friends gave me crzy looks (they would not participate even though I asked them to).

[Cynthia, Prescott, AZ]

I used to use pyrethrin to discourage slugs from eating my flowers, when I had a bad infestation of them. Your can spray the pyrethrin on the flower stem for discouragement, since spraying on the flowers can damage them. I always used it as very light dusting of the spray on the flowers when there was insufficient flower stem. I had to repeat this every 2 or 3 days to be effective. Permithrin is a synthetic version of pyrethrin, a natural chemical from marigolds. The synthetics are also called pyrethroids.

The damage that ants can do is to carry scale to your orchids and then milk them like we do cows. If scale shows up, suspect the ants of bringing them.

In the spring, I am going to do some experiments with diatomaceous earth from different sources by applying them to various anthills in the neighborhood.

[mayres]

Similar to what Cynthia is saying - in Oregon the ants also bring in mealies for farming - IMHO do all you can to keep the ants outside and away from your orchids.