Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 10:29:47 -0700 From: Wim Leys <wim.leys@li04383.lin.vlaanderen.be> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg2075$foo@default> Subject: Re: Ants in my plants
At the beginning, when I had just placed my greenhouse, my CP's were
growing in saucers placed on the ground of the greenhouse. This had a
number of drawbacks :
- it took ages to water them all, one saucer after the other
- the saucers were not exactly placed horizointal, so some plants stood
in more water than others,
- if the watering wasn't done carefully
- some of the scarce water was lost on the ground at the other
side of the saucer, or
- the waterstream would rinse out the soil in the pots
Fortunately I could buy some second hand aluminium tables (hi Peter).
They are +- 15 cm high and I lined them with pond foil. Some big flat
bricks were placed at the corners to prevent the heavy tables to sink in
the soil. The bricks were placed horizontally so the water would not
gather at one end of the table. I now have only three big "saucers" to
water, and all goes very well.
Now to come back to the question "Ants in my plants", two ant nests
establised under the flat bricks, one at the entrance of the greenhouse,
the other at the end of it.
One year later I decided to repot all my plants in square 9*9 cm pots.
This was done to let them fit better into the tables. A few weeks later
I noticed that the ants were going from their nests to the S. minor and
S. rubra plants in thier typical colonnes (1000 going, 1000 coming
back). I went looking at my S. minors to see them catch the ants, but I
could not see one single ant being cought. So I took a plant and looked
in a pitcher, it was filled with crawling and dead ants (and flies). The
two ant nests vanished totally during that summer. I believe my plants
rooted them out. At that time I might have had a total of about 50 S.
minor's and S. rubra's. The S. alata's did also cought a good deal of
the ants, but less per plant than the other two species.
I think it was because of the good passage they had, thanks to the
square pots that they could be caught in that numbers. Round pots when
placed next to each other provide little possiblities to go from one pot
to the other, with square pots it is almost a flat surface.
I must say that my plants were grown in very high water levels, almost
to soil level, so the ants would not think about invading the pots. This
is however not possible with Nepenthes.
Hope this might somehow help
Kind regards
Wim
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