Ants eating my plant stems! Need advice

I tied down my plant which put pressure on where the branches meet the main stem, and thats where the ants keep setting up shop and eating the fuck outa my plant! They are digging into my stem bases and hollowing them out, iv rapped the majority of those spots with electrical tape but i dont like the idea of restricting my fast growing plant by wrapping it up, and i ran out of tape. Plus it will only temerarily stop the ants. Mother fuckers. I put neem oil on them put that hardly stopped them, killed some of them. I'm going organic but if there's a good non organic source for my problem ill accept it. Anybody have experience with this, or can help me out? Thanks in advance

You might try Tanglefoot on the rim of your pots. Its sticky as hell and bugs get stuck in it. Also great for other uses with critters. lol

the only thing i can think of is boric acid sry

cayenne pepper, citrus oil (can be soaked into a piece of string), lemon juice, cinnamon or coffee grounds are all organic ant deterrents.
I have also heard of people using cloves and dried mint... I personally use the cayenne pepper. i steep it in some mineral oil and use the liquid to ward away ants. It can be liberally painted onto the base of stem/affected areas.

Safer soap bug spray works REAL well,and like already mentioned some tanglefoot ..anything sticky at the base of the plant ,good thing is ants cant fly,so if they can't climb the plant ,you have no worries

Introduce them to the power of lighter fluid.

yeah ihear u man, i hav problems with those bastards too, only they borrow up into the holes in the bottom ov my pots!.. those fuckerz, man they piss me off all the time, man!!

use de it will solve your problems

All good answers, thanks alot guys. Im gonna just pick up that Safer bug soap if my neem oil and coffee grounds dont work, thx again, lets get it!

Shit, meant to add, whats mineral oil? I like that pepper idea but seems to involved for a busy man, but nothin better than organic, or as they say..thats the realist shit iv ever smoked!

DE is organic it costs less than three bucks at Lowes

O DE is Diatomaceous Earth, I actually bought some of that last year when i got fuckin bud worms, i lost some good main cola's to them fuckers last year, not this year. Thanks for the advice, real helpful. Is it safe to coat on the stems, and when it comes time, is it safe to powder it on my whole plant? It wont dry up leaves or burn them or anything?

hey try baking soda round the stem of ur plant, they eat it and explode! im sure they will get the picture

perk

Man i covered my main stem and the side stem bases with the DE and today my plant got increasingly droopy, so i guess that shit is no good to keep on it or something but i washed it off fearing i wouldnt have a living plant tommorow. It might of had that effect because the ants dug out little hole on the stems and that DE must have got right into the plants system. I dont know but im gonna end up picking up that safer spray tommorow.

there eating my bark like a scab on your knee..my plant has skin missing on the main stem so I covered the scabs with vaseline and the stems with alot of vaseline too so they cant climb up her any more and I also dumped a whole can of coffee around all the plants so that the scent trail gets covered and they supposedly hate coffee...hope that works


The Seven spray I got and cut with water seemed to make some of the leaves burn so I slowed down on the neem type stuff..



any how those bitches need to get the hell out of here

Dissolve some soap in to water and use that soap water to the plants.

Try pyrethrins, they only kill on contact though-so ya gotta get em as ya see em.

ill try that

use ground cinnamon on top of soil, works like a charm.

also, if it's not leaf eating ant, there might be aphids present on your plant. both of them have a symbiotic relationship, aphids feed ants, and ants protect them. I have a 3 footer that looked really bad for a month and i didn't know why until i noticed ants, i thought oh well, what possibly can they do? after little research i found out that besides the leafcutter ant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leafcutter_ant), there's nothing for an ant to look on a ganja plant, except if aphids are present. check your plant very carefully. if those ARE leafcutters, use ground cinnamon as stated.

when i get back home i'll post a few good picture i've taken of the little ant+aphid colony i had, scary shit man.

its actually kinda cool. well not for us.
http://insects.about.com/od/coolandunusualinsects/f/antsandaphids.htm