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August 29, 2010
I recently had my indoor bonsai trees out on my covered porch for a few days of pruning and I noticed I had fire ants in my bonsai...and I wasn't sure how many of them I had until I picked one of the pots up. Within 2 or 3 seconds, hundreds of fire ants were scurrying angrily out of every crack and crevice! I didn't know what to do at first...thought about it for a while. I didn't want to remove the dirt and have to re-pot them in the heat of the summer...and I didn't want to take a chance of poisoning my bonsai with a harsh pesticide. I certainly didn't want the ants to eat the roots! A flurry of ideas went through my mind and after considerable thought, I narrowed my order of battle down to 5 options...not knowing at the time, that I would end up using all 5 before the ants were totally annihilated! "Annihilated" is such a harsh word...and ordinarily I have a deep abiding respect for ants and bees. And, had the ants not set up camp in my bonsai, they would have never been in any danger from me...for the next 8 days, the ants proved to be a very formidable adversary.
My first option was to fill my bathtub and place the pots of bonsai in the tub to try to drive them out. I placed the bonsai ( all 12 of them) in the tub and left them submerged for an hour. The ants were floating on the surface of the water and rafting up in small swarms. I took the bonsai out 1 at a time and rinsed them off in my kitchen sink with the spray hose to remove any ants that were clinging to the tree. It took a couple of hours to get them all off and I was satisfied that the ants were either gone or dead. When I awoke in the morning and went to check it out, not only were the ants still there, but they had rebuilt all their tunnels overnight! They either held their breath for an hour or had a new hatching of ants...or both!
My second option was to over water my bonsai several times a day to try to convince the ants that they should move on to higher and dryer ground. After 3 days, the ants showed little sign of wanting to relocate.
My third option was to use a well known ant bait to take back into the mound to kill the queen or queens. After 3 days and no noticeable decline of the ant population, I gave up on that idea. It probably would have eventually worked if I had given it more time...but it was almost as if I could hear the ants chewing on the roots of my bonsai and felt I should proceed on to the next "sure" thing!
Option #4 was to use a liquid insecticide soap to soak the soil of the bonsai. At the end of the day, I couldn't see any positive results; so the next day I went to a nursery and bought a granulated insecticide that is formulated for ant mounds in flower beds. I sprinkled about 1/4 the amount of the granules recommended on the soil of the bonsai and then poured water gently into the pot to dissolve the insecticide. In the morning, the ants were dead or gone. I waited a day to make sure the ants were gone and then flushed to soil to remove the insecticide. I then installed high tech, no cost ant guards to prevent ants from climbing the legs of my potting table ever again! The ant guards consisted of 4 - 1 liter plastic bottles with the tops cut off and about 3 inches of water in them. I then placed each of the legs of my potting table inside one of the plastic jugs with water and made sure the legs were not touching the sides of the plastic jugs... 2 weeks later, we are still "ant free".
Truman Anderson
409 599 7112
