presents
Manien and I have a nice little back yard and decided to make it into a garden. We planned out little paths and where we were going to plant various vegetables and herbs.
There were two cherry trees when we started working the garden.	But one of them wasn't doing too well. The blossoms were sad and sparse. There was sap oozing from all over, and it leaned off to one side like it was ready to just give up. So Manien got her brother in law to chop it down.
The removal of the cherry tree actually allowed a good portion of the garden to get a lot more sunlight.	There were an awful lot of ants trooping up and down the remaining tree, however. And some of its leaves were starting to look a little chewed.
	Consulting Manien's natural gardening books, there seemed to be quite a few deterrents to ants. Cayenne was often mentioned, so we made a ring of fire around the base of the tree.
	And indeed those ants did not like the cayenne.
They ran frantically around the trunk trying to find a way to cross the barrier without having to wade through hot pepper.	I kept track of one ant by the grub he was carrying, and was pretty sure no one was making it across.
But by the next morning the ants had gotten over their aversion to cayenne, and it was business as usual up and down the tree.
And soon enough it rained anyways, washing the spice away.
Planting garlic around was mentioned as another natural ant deterrent. No effect.	Coffee grounds were also mentioned as something good for keeping the ants away. It didn't even work as well as the cayenne. I started to imagine us harvesting hot garlicky caffeinated cherries from the tree.
Josue was visiting one day and he noted some little black bugs on a planter. Bugs that had completely infested a garden of his in the past.
The lower leaves on the cherry tree were looking pretty sad, but the upper leaves still looked fine.	But then I noticed that some leaves were dark and curling in on themselves.
	And looking closer I saw that the underside of the leaves were covered, completely coated with these little black bugs.
	Impenetrable, unstoppable hoardes of them.
As time went on we became fairly sure that the bugs were aphids. Dopey little destroyers of plants that are actually farmed by some ants. Strange and disturbing.	I thought of another possible bug repellent.
	And so the tree had another protective ring of fire. And truth be told, I think it worked the best of any of the natural remedies. For days the ants and aphids would not cross the hot sauce barrier.
	But again came the rain, and the hot sauce was defeated.
And as the ants swarmed all over the garden, and the aphids fell onto us out of the tree, Manien and I , exasperated, decided to use Tanglefoot. This is a sticky substance that you put around a tree trunk and any bug trying to get across gets stuck. But it looks gross, and it is really annoying if you accidentally lean on it.	It worked though. The traffic on the tree was soon brought to a standstill.
	Ladybugs even showed up. The books mentioned them as eaters of aphids, so their presence was encouraging. We got mostly black ladybugs with red spots. These successes may have been too little too late. The tree is oozing sap and generally does not look happy. We have planted a couple of other trees in the garden, just in case.
updated June 16, 2005 by jason turner my home . my grind index . board . email . grind home