How to stop the ants attacking the Lemon tree

G'day folks,

Please feel free to comment i would love to hear from you!

Ingredients:  Masking tape or any other strong sticky tape,

Method:         Cut a long length of tape in order to fit around the bottom of the lemon tree trunk. Fold the sticky tape so that both sides are sticky and then wrap around the bottom half of the tree. Make sure you remove and change it once its full of trapped ants.

Please read on and i will tell you more about the lemon tree in the pot.

                                      

Masking tape around my lemon tree to stop the ants

In the 1st year the lemon tree was so small but it still gave us a crop in winter and was healthy enough, it is a Dwarf Meyer Lemon with a mild juicy content. The following year the white perfumed flowers started growing and eventually when they fell off tiny lemon buds appeared but not for long.


Little to my knowledge my lemon tree was being attacked by ants who found a home in my large pot, (as they do).  I later found out from researching on the net and gardening magazines that the ants were not eating my lemon flowers and buds but were farming the aphids who also found the lemon tree tasty. (This is where my sister said 'why bother').  Aphids are the little bugs, usually green in my garden, that invade in large numbers and suck all the goodness out of your plants.  The ants chew of the aphids wings so they can't fly away and then eat the secretion from the aphids...yuck...I hear you say, its true I have seen it in action. So I had to first treat the aphid plague by either picking off or spraying with a high pressure hose or using a home remedy garlic spray, I shall put a link to this later.


Before I found out about the masking tape solution I tried drowning them in the pot, re-potting and sprinkling ant dust but this was not a permanent solution as they kept coming back. The masking tape has worked you just need to change it when it is full of trapped ants and you will see in the photos below that the lemons are growing.

The lemons starting to grow

My Dwarf Meyer Lemon tree, happily growing in a pot.