Miniature ants inside my potatoes

bnther · Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:06 pm

Anyone ever have this before?

I pulled up a potato this afternoon and noticed that it looked a little dark. Curious, I cut it open and found it had some tunnels running through it. What really surprised me was that inside of these tunnels were the teeniest ants I had ever seen. They were probably a 3rd of the size of the small ants that run around on the sidewalk.

Another potato - on the same plant - had 1/8" pits that looked like something had started burrowing into but gave up. After being grossed out from the first one, I elected to toss the second one too.

I'm not sure what happened, but I would like to prevent it from happening again. Any feedback would be appreciated.

applestar · Sun Jul 19, 2015 8:14 pm

I once had an invasion of teeniest ants I ever saw -- I could hardly see them, they were all clustered and they looked like a moving shadow. I learned they were GREASE ants.

...but I don't know what Grease ants would be doing in a starchy potato, so I'm not sure that's what yours were.

...the abortive tiny holes are probably from wireworms. I have to inspect every potato with those by chasing down the hole/tunnel -- often what seems like a tiny hole meanders through the potato and the wireworm will be at the end of it inside the potato.

bnther · Tue Jul 21, 2015 10:33 am

applestar wrote:I once had an invasion of teeniest ants I ever saw -- I could hardly see them, they were all clustered and they looked like a moving shadow. I learned they were GREASE ants.

...but I don't know what Grease ants would be doing in a starchy potato, so I'm not sure that's what yours were.

...the abortive tiny holes are probably from wireworms. I have to inspect every potato with those by chasing down the hole/tunnel -- often what seems like a tiny hole meanders through the potato and the wireworm will be at the end of it inside the potato.

Thanks for the reply.

These ants were something I'd never seen before. And they were completely through the potato - which I thought was weird for something 6 inches below the surface. I'll try and get a picture next time.