How to get rid of ants on plants: Ants devoured the flowers in my garden so I asked a pest control expert for help

My second year growing flowers from seed was overall a lot more successful than the first year but I majorly struggled keeping on top of one pest – ants.

I had gotten on top of the ants for a short while and then it rained heavily for days. I thought surely they’d be washed away, instead they were hiding in sheltered spots and returned as quickly as the sun.

Ants can cause damage to roots and lead to wilting and brown foliage by eating the sap and pollen, and because ants and aphids are friends you’ll often get both at the same time or one after the other.

READ MORE: Surprising ant fact that will finally help you get rid of them

In the hopes of getting on top of this ahead of spring bulb planting and well in time for the next flower season, I asked Matthew Jones, pest control expert at Rentokil for advice.

“For you to get that control you probably need to get control of the nest in that situation because you want to keep the flowers, and flowers are what they’re eating,” he says.

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And to help prevent aphids – ants’ equally annoying insect buddies – Jones says making sure the plants are healthy means aphids are less likely to attack. As a beginner gardener that’s something I’m still learning about, so I’ll keep that in mind for next time.

My garden is in pots and containers since I’m in a rental with a brick courtyard, so to help combat the ant situation Jones had some very simple advice.

“Keep moving them around so that you’ll be disturbing those chemical lines [that ants use to communicate], and making sure that you’re also then keeping the area around it clean so that there’s there’s no [metaphorical] road signs saying, ‘Hey, all the flowers are here’,” he says.

“You might be able to control it just with some physical deception rather than chemical control.”

Annoyingly, Jones says ants like to nest inside the pots and can also be in the drip trays under the pots.

While I don’t use drip trays, some pots sit directly on the concrete which likely means that water can pool underneath a bit so ants are probably gathering there too.

I will definitely be doing a bit of shuffling and tidying before getting set up with spring bulbs and panting autumn and winter flowers.

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Another thing that I found helps, but only when you keep on top of it daily, is spraying them with a spray bottle with soapy water, which is what I did at the start of the season before I got lax.

I sprayed at the ants on the plants and then down the stalk as they ran away and continued spraying them as they went to their nests

This really did help with numbers but once I stopped doing it (mainly because of the rain) they came back with a vengeance. So if you try this, know it’ll only work if you keep doing it regularly for a decent amount of time.

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