How to get rid of ants on cucumbers?
Ants are beneficial insects that can rid the garden of pests and enrich the soil.This is the most common insect species, which has 14,000 subspecies.
These insects are also valued for endurance and labor. But at the same time they can cause significant damage to plants in the greenhouse or in the garden, and therefore it is worth knowing how to cope with such uninvited guests if necessary.
Causes of insects
In greenhouses or greenhouses, ants can appear due to the attractive smell of plants. The insect feeds on organic matter, and therefore such facilities are an ideal environment for their living. In such a structure is warm all year round, there are also sources of food and water, and therefore the ants can live in greenhouses all the time.
If there is a small amount of ants in the greenhouse, then this is normal, as they are an integral element of the system and help loosen the earth, saturate it with minerals and other elements. And they eliminate ticks and other pests. In this case, ants can quickly multiply and in a short time turn the greenhouse into one solid anthill. Because ants in the greenhouse, especially in the cucumber, are quite common.
Good or bad?
A large number of parasites in the greenhouse can harm plants, eat seedlings, or damage them. Insects damage roots and spread weed seeds in a greenhouse, causing aphids to appear in a greenhouse with cucumbers. By themselves, these insects are harmless and can not harm a person, but sometimes they cause allergies after a bite.
How to fight?
There are many ways in which you can get rid of these insects in the garden or in the greenhouse. To save the plants, they must be treated with certain means. They can be both home-made and ready-made, sold in stores.
The most effective way is to destroy pests with chemicals, in the second place are folk methods, and the third place is occupied by physical means.
Folk methods
Using this method you can kill ants is quite simple. For this you need to lay out the bait in bowls in the place where the parasites can easily get. We must make sure that such feeding was not available to children and animals living in the house.
These traps must be set constantly throughout the month. Inside the silk is put the minced meat interspersed with acid. And you can also use boiled potatoes mixed with sugar. Boric acid is added to this puree. Sometimes boric acid can be mixed with an egg and add a spoonful of flour.
All this is placed next to the habitat of parasites. Food can poison insects after a certain time, since the agent acts slowly and does not kill immediately, but gradually. Ants themselves will carry such bait throughout the anthill, and kill their relatives.
And also summer residents recommend mustard powder as a means for poison. Sachets sleep right on the anthill. During such a pritevka, you should avoid contact with ants so that they do not carry the infection under the skin of a person when bitten.
When sprinkling the anthill with ashes, use only hot medium. Before this, the dwelling of the ants must be slightly stirred to open access to the tunnels under the ground. Coals of ash, which will fall into such moves, will block movement there and oxygen will be shed, which will lead to the death of eggs and adults.
Some experts use cinnamon. Its smell is not tolerated by ants, and therefore they scatter. To do this, it is necessary to dissolve a packet of cinnamon in a bucket of water and pour over an anthill with this solution. Insects will quickly leave their habitat as soon as they smell this substance.
Chemicals
These preparations can be used to get rid of insects in greenhouses, observing certain precautions. Insects are not resistant to the effects of chemistry, and therefore it kills them quickly, but at the same time, particles of poison can get into the human body through vegetables that were infected by the ants themselves.
Therefore, it is recommended to treat greenhouses with chemical means in the spring, when the shoots are still small and there are no fruits on them. The most common means are:
- Raptor;
- Raid;
- Dohlox;
- "Malathion".
High demand and effectiveness is different "Muracid" and "Gnome-2." In general, these tools can act quickly and efficiently compared to others. But before using them, you should carefully read the instructions and adhere to security measures.
Chemicals are poisons that accumulate in the vegetation and cause further poisoning of the animals or people who come into contact with it. They can also become infected by chemicals and bees when they pollinate color, and then transfer the infection to other trees or plants in the garden.
Therefore, it is safer to use folk methods to control insects. If it is not possible to use them, then the chemistry is applied only after the plants have faded. When processing it is necessary to put on protective clothes and a respirator.
Some experts eliminate insects by physical methods. For this, the bed is dug up and the anthill is transferred to another place entirely. And also it is possible to pour insect housing with boiling water or sprinkle with ashes.
In some cases, the plants themselves are wrapped with foil underneath, which prevents ants from penetrating to the upper parts of the plant and the fruits. Water barrier is also insurmountable for such insects.
Used for its construction cut in half tires, inside which plants are planted. It is worth remembering that physical methods will not help to solve the problem completely with this insect, nevertheless, some of the ants will definitely leave the greenhouse or the site.
You can cope with the ant queen in several ways. One of them is treating it with sweets that all ants love. You can put other types of baits, such as meat. It depends on the species of ants, which usually feed in different ways.
When the area around an anthill is strewed with such lures, they all go out to feast on them. The site owner only needs to watch the ants and look for a female among them. It differs from other large size, as well as the presence of wings.
Sometimes ants can not leave the anthill for delicacies, and bring them inside their homes. If the path from a delicacy to an anthill is noticed, it means they have discovered the bait and put it inside. To poison the uterus, sweets or meat can be sprinkled with acid or other poison.
Sometimes combined methods of ant removal are used. For this purpose, chemical preparations with mechanical methods are used. For example, a cloth is put in a bucket and sugar is poured on top. Such a device is placed near the anthill.
After the insects smell the delicacy, they move to this container, and the owner of the site can only bring them along with the container out of their garden.
In some cases, you can use mustard for spraying cucumbers or other plants in the greenhouse. To do this, 300 g of mustard is diluted in 10 liters of water. The resulting composition is infused for 3 days. Then the solution is sprayed both plants and the inner walls of the greenhouse.
Preventive measures
To prevent these pests from appearing on the site, it is necessary to remove boards, logs and other rubbish from it, since it is there that the insects choose a place to build their home. A special feature is also the fact that ants can live at the same time throughout the site, for example, in one place to eat, and in the other to make a place to live or breed.
It is also recommended every autumn to deeply loosen the soil and destroy weeds and aphids on the site, since the latter is a delicacy for ants, and therefore they migrate after it.
Before planting crops need a greenhouse treated with a special solution of flax and soda. These ingredients are mixed with water and poured into greenhouses in the amount of 5 liters of liquid per square meter. mAfter such prevention, the ants must move to another place of residence.
If the problem cannot be solved by these methods, then it is better to find the uterus and destroy it.
In some cases, for prophylaxis it is possible to sprinkle ant holes with lime. In each case, you need to choose those drugs that will work effectively depending on external conditions. But it is also important to process the seeds before planting.
As you can see, ants can be quite a serious problem on the site, they often cause the destruction of all vegetation. That is why it is necessary to get rid of ants at the same moment, as soon as they appeared in the garden. You can choose any method of struggle, as long as the greenhouse does not become the home of ants or aphids.
Learn more about how to get rid of ants on cucumbers, you will learn from the following video.