Battling the Elements of Nature.

Gardening in a zone three climate in the Rockies is not easy. Having said that, I watched Alla Olkhovska’s latest Instagram post and I feel somewhat embarrassed for saying it. For those who have not followed her, she is a gardener who lives in Kharkiv, Ukraine. She makes her living selling specialty seeds. You can read about her just by Googling her name. She is an inspiration.  

In the last three days, we have confronted Carpenter Ants, a frost and yesterday a hail storm! A week ago it was 25C, today 8C. Variety is definitely the gardening challenge here but there could be a lot worse in extremes of nature!

We used to have a beautiful MayDay, Bird Cherry, Prunus padus close to the house. It grew so large, we made the difficult decision to remove it about eighteen years ago. Rather than remove the entire tree, we left a 12ft high trunk. Ivy is difficult to grow here but we found a hardy variety that did manage to climb the remaining tree to make a rather lovely feature. This last winter with a temperature of -39C, the Ivy succumbed and still, in the middle of May, it is brown. Some is recovering at the base of the snag so I am hoping it will grow to be its former self.

Earlier this spring on a warm day we noticed the odd large black ant on the patio always alone and seemingly lost. Then after a few days I found one in the house and two or three outside.  Alarm bells! Carpenter Ants? I took a look at the Mayday snag and sure enough a lot of sawdust was at its base. We immediately placed ant traps everywhere and I am happy to say, it seems to have been a short battle because no more have been found. We will certainly be watching but the MayDay snag is the perfect place for Carpenter Ants, or used to be. I was liberal with the Borax.

We always have a lot of teeny tiny ants in the garden – or we did until Toady arrived last summer. He would sit by any ant activity he could find and feast. On those hot muggy days towards the end of August when the ants all seem to message one another and swarm together, there was a distinctly reduced number. Ants swarmed on the patio at my daughter’s wedding breakfast which caused a lot of fun as everyone was trying to eat their sausages and pancakes while dancing around ants and puddles of boiling water!

The biggest swarm we ever had was on the compost. They must have been working away in there all summer long but again, on one of those days the entire surface of the open bins was covered with flying ants and all the relations, flying off to form new colonies.  

Ants are not a bad insect to have in the garden. In the house, yes but in the garden they are workhorses.

Our reactions to ants are not always in their favor but regular small ants if not Carpenter Ants or Fire Ants are very beneficial to the garden. They are a big part of the garden Food Web. Just as earthworms do, they condition our soil by tunneling, aerating, eating and consequently decomposing dead plant material. Their actions open the soil to good drainage and they apparently move as much soil as earthworms. After the big ant take-over in our compost pile, the resulting compost the following year was truly the black gold you hope for. The ants disappeared naturally as their home was gone. Ants are also predators of other insects and while they do not exactly ‘farm aphids’ as many suggest, they do use them for their honeydew. Ants are attracted to plants that are weak in some way and will take advantage of ready food supplies. Ants have mutualistic relationships with many plants but that does not mean they are harmful and no, it is not necessary for ants to open peony buds. They are merely taking advantage of the sweet nectar, which is what it is there for, to attract pollinators. The peony buds will open with or without ants. Ants rarely bite humans, another unfounded fear. It is not pleasant to be weeding and disturb and ant’s nest but although they may crawl all over your arm, it would be rare for any harm to be inflicted.

Ants are one of the most common insects on earth and a very important part of the complex webs of life. There are those who take a lifetime to study and learn about these social insects. For gardeners it is just important to know, with the exception of big shiny black Carpenter Ants or very rarely Fire Ants they are not harmful at all but fascinating to watch!

Below: An active ant hill which protects the nest mostly underground and our compost box when smothered with swarming ants.