My problem has been ANTS – the little tiny kind – that crawl up and eat ridges around the ripening cherries! I have heard that the herb pennyroyal planted around the base may help; or using borax there at fruiting time; or soft soap sprays.
Can anyone help me plan for the eventual battle?
G.L. Foskett
See an earlier post: ‘How do I protect my Fruit Trees from Ants?’
Spread a THICK layer of petroleum jelly or mentholated rub around tree trunks or stems of plants being ‘farmed’ by ants.
As usual I have black aphids hiding on the underside of a few leaves on my Stella walled trained cherry. The first sign of infection is the leaves curling up in disgust! And it is the aphids that the ants will be interested in. I find I can rub or brush them off by hand to some extent with a small tree like this, so on a small scale you don’t have to resort to chemicals necessarily.
This year I have come across the little green apple sucker aphid all heavin’ and a-hatching as my apple flowers opened up. The base of the inflorescence was covered in them. Luckily the tree is a big one and will cope with some thinning.