Trutillo
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Joined: Tue May 29, 2012 6:47 pm
Location: Pennsylvania

Ants.. friend or foe?

so I'm new to this and I noticed that under the leaf of my pumpkin plant there was about 5 or 6 ants and they seemed to be tending to some kind of little black pods, I brushed them off and squished the pods but I wanted to know if anyone has seen this and if its a problem.

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GardenRN
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Joined: Wed Jan 12, 2011 10:01 am
Location: Chesterfield, Va

said "pods", probably light orange to deep red in color? are most likely squash bug eggs. The ants just happened to be in the neighborhood, don't worry about them. The eggs......squish until your fingers hurt! They ruin good foliage with a quickness. Google squash bug and get used to what all of the stages of life look like for this bug. Kill all in sight.

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luvthesnapper
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Location: Delaware

Big ant hills can mess with roots of the plants, but I don't have any that actually eat the leaves or anything. They will eat rotting/open sweets in the garden, like strawberries you didn't see that got old, and gave them room to get inside. The ants here look to be just roaming around, bumping into other ants.

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rainbowgardener
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Location: TN/GA 7b

Yeah ants generally don't eat living plants, though they may clean up dead or rotting stuff. But they sometimes "farm" aphids. The aphids give off a sweet sticky secretion ("honeydew") that the ants like. So the ants may bring a whole bunch of aphids and put them on your plant and guard them. (I kid you not, I recently watched it happen!)

Other than that, the ants aren't a problem, but watch out for aphids.

Trutillo
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Joined: Tue May 29, 2012 6:47 pm
Location: Pennsylvania

thanks guys, yeah the pods did look like eggsacks of some sort they were actually dark black ones though and when I squished them there was blood, ill make sure to keep squishing them if they pop up and just leave the ants as long as there arent too many.

PhillyGardener
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Joined: Wed May 02, 2012 5:28 pm
Location: Philadelphia, PA

I've got sugar ants in my cucumber flowers :shock: Are they eating the nectar?



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