Ghost pot = 1 giant anthill??

TheRyan

TheRyan

So I have read on these forums that ants are not a real problem, and they help pollinate a little. I think one of my ghost pepper pots has a few too many though, is this a problem?
 
The ants have brought dirt all around the pot (only pot with this problem)...

 
They also have holes dug around the edges of the pot (bottom right of pot), and the dirt around the stem in this pic was piled up by the ants, so me moving it was when i noticed them...

 
And after I moved the pot to a different spot, all these ants came out within 1 minute, and I moved it 3 more times within 5 minutes, which made thousands of ants come out.....which I mercilessly dealt with.

 
Something to worry about or not? Any help is appreciated, and just to show a good plant here is one of my habs I have to show off :)
 
TheRyan said:
I have seen ants in almost all of my flowers and have not seen a single aphid?
Click to expand...
I have ants as well, but unless i just  cant see the aphids, I dont have any..but I do have the small little ants...
 
Not really related but something interesting I just read.
 
From Wikipedia:
 
An interesting variation in ant-aphid relationships involves lycaenid butterflies and Myrmica ants. For example, Niphanda fusca butterflies lay eggs on plants where ants tend herds of aphids. The eggs hatch as caterpillars which feed on the aphids. The ants do not defend the aphids from the caterpillars but carry the caterpillars to their nest. In the nest, the ants feed the caterpillars, which produce honeydew for the ants. When the caterpillars reach full size, they crawl to the colony entrance and form cocoons. After two weeks, butterflies emerge and take flight.
 
I have had ants with no aphids, but ants are known to carry aphids to the host plant. But they also eat other bugs.
 
I had ants and aphids on my TS and ghost in my little greenhouse put some sevin dust on them and that took care of both lol Next time I will hit them with Supper hot pepper spray and see how that works..  
 
I just went back out, about 15 minutes after the last time I moved the pot and this is what I see.

 
Killed all of them, and I also looked for aphids on all of my plants. Admittedly I found very few, and none on this ghost plant.
 
EDIT: Thanks for all of the fast replies by the way, this forum is great :)
 
I like the idea of using Sevin - it kicks the hell out of the ants & aphids and then degrades pretty quickly.
Borax or boric acid works on crawling insects indoors but boron is a soil toxin and builds up with continued use.
Real Old timers will remember scenes from the early TV series "Death Valley Days". The lack of vegetation 
was due to the salts (Boron included) as well as lack of precipitation.
 
Wow that is a lot of ants :D
 
I set a beer trap for snails,
caught one snail and 1000 ants lol
 
Maybe another thing u could try.
 
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