Your dragon fruit plant is being eaten by ants? There are many things you can do. You can buy bait stations and put them around the plants, but make sure no dogs, kids, or other animals will get to them. You can look up recipes for ant traps and bait, and you can use borax to make your own traps.
Borax can be sprinkled around the plant, but it doesn’t work as well as when it is mixed with other things and used as part of a bait. Borax is not dangerous in small amounts, but you should be careful with it.
Or… you might be better off not bothering the ants on the dragon fruit flowers. Let the ants take care of things. It could be the sugar, but we’re not sure. Some growers have found that ants have a direct effect on how fast pitaya flowers get fertilized. Let’s talk about it in more detail further on.
So, what’s the problem?
If your dragon fruit flowers bloom at the end of July, during the rainy season, more ants than usual will visit your plants. You can tell it’s about to rain because there are more ants around. So they don’t get flooded and drowned by the rain, they need to move themselves and their eggs up high.
As you grow more things in your garden, this pattern will show up again and again. Ants on flowering beans, ants on flowering chili peppers, ants everywhere. So we think that this might be the normal way things work. And instead of getting rid of the ants, we can let nature take its course.
Do you want ants on your trees or not?
Ants are usually drawn to trees for two main reasons: looking for honeydew or looking for rotten wood or tree cavities to live in.
In most cases, ants do not physically harm your plants. Instead, they “show you a red flag”, which may mean that your tree is in trouble. However, there are always exceptions. There are many different kinds of ants. But there are two kinds of ants that can really hurt your tree:
- The fire ants, red. The red fire ants build their homes, which look like domes, around the base of trees. These ants are mean and will bite anything that comes near their home.
- The carpenter ants. Carpenter ants leave piles of sawdust at the base of the tree to let people know they are there. Carpenter ants are black and make their homes in trees with rotten wood.
What can be done?
But what if the ants are still there when the flowers have turned into fruits? In some places, these ants might bring in aphids, which are a type of bug that can hurt fruit.
In this case, you should take off the brown, dried, and crispy flowers that are still on the fruits. This will cut down on the number of ants and make bugs less likely to hang around your fruits.
Some people have found that ants, especially Argentine Ants, are a big problem for varieties like Condor, American Beauty, and Nicaragua Red. So be on the lookout for them.
Here are some ways to keep ants away.
Method #1: Boric acid
You can try this cheap method to get rid of ants:
3 tablespoon boric acid, 3 cups sugar, 1 gallon water.
Make some places for the ants to eat in the spaces between your dragon fruit plants. The boric acid gets to the queen ant and kills the whole colony. Since sugar goes bad in about a week, you can make this in a container and store it. Use some of it during the week and put the rest in the refrigerator.
Once a week, fill the bottle with fresh solution, and you can use it two or three times a week. In two weeks, you’ll see a lot less of them. Repeat every 6 weeks all summer long.
Method #2: Citrus peel
Use citrus peel is another thing you can try. We think the ants stay away because of the spicy or minty stuff in the peel. A little bit of tangerine peel on our dragonfruits will keep the ants from eating them.
Method #3: Enzymes
There is another, less common way to keep ants away, and that is to use enzymes. It’s nothing special, and you don’t need a full-fledged lab to make it. Fermentation is a method that can be used to get enzymes right from kitchen scraps.
With a 1:3:10 ratio, that means: 1 part sugar, 3 parts waste from living things, 10 parts water
You can mix things together to make a liquid that works well to get rid of ants but is safe for your health and the environment.
Method #4: Peppermint
An ant infestation might not kill your tree, but if you don’t stop it in time, it can spread to your homes and other parts of your yard. Good news is that this ant problem can be stopped or even reversed with simple solutions. To get rid of ants, do the following:
Add 30 drops of peppermint oil to a gallon of water to make a solution of peppermint oil and water. The solution should be sprayed on your fruit trees. Ants hate peppermint, so as soon as they smell it on your tree, they will leave.
Method #5: Soap
The bugs that eat tree sap can be killed with an insecticide or horticultural soap. This will get rid of the honeydew on the trees that the ants like to eat. If you put bait at the bottom of your trees, the ants will be caught as they walk by.
You should use soap that kills bugs. This can be made at home with regular dish soap, NOT laundry soap. Use 1 tablespoon per quart of water and mix (shake) it well. Use it in a new spray bottle or one that has been very, very well washed, rinsed, and dried. If this is an indoor plant, spray the leaves until they drip, and then spray the whole plant’s bottom.
Method #6: Pepper & cinnamon
Spread chilli powder around the bases of your trees and in your garden beds. Ants can’t stand chilli powder, so they’ll stay away from your trees. Black pepper is another effective way to get rid of ants. If you sprinkle it around the trees, the ants will leave quickly. If you put cinnamon around the base of your trees, ants won’t cross that line.
Method #7: Scotch
Want to stop the ants from climbing up your trees? Try putting inside-out packaging scotch tape around the trunks of your trees. It will keep the ants away, but you have to keep replacing the tape when it gets dirty with ants and other things.
Method #8: Kill the Queen 🙁
If you want to get rid of the ants yourself, do the following:
Take a big pot that can hold 2 gallons of water or more. Put water in it and put it on the stove to heat it up. The water should be anywhere from 160 to 170 degrees hot.Once the water is hot, sneak the pot over to the fire ant mound and pour the water on the side of it, as close as you can. Make sure you don’t wake up the fire ants. Pour all of the hot water on the ant hill. Don’t forget that your goal is to kill the queen. So make sure you do this before 11 a.m. or after 2 p.m., when the queen isn’t working.
Most likely, you’ll see that the ants that made it through the flood are busy building a new mound close by. You have to do the same thing again and again for at least three days or until you don’t see any new ant hills popping up nearby.
Method #9 +: Comprehensive approach
Pests on our fruit plants are very annoying, and everyone wants to get rid of them as soon as possible. Be careful is the most important thing. Pests can happen by chance or because they have a chance to. By taking care of our plants regularly, we can reduce the chance that pests will infest them and take away most of their chances. There are different ways to get rid of different kinds of pests, some of which are specific to that kind while others may be more general. It is best to use more than one method to get the best results. We can do the following:
- Apply pesticide. There are different kinds of pesticides. White, mealy bugs can be taken care of by hand (brushing and washing the plant with soap). Before there are too many, snails can be picked off or dug out. Systemic insecticides like Curacron or Decis can be used to kill other bugs like ants, flies, and cockroaches.
- Using homemade or organic pesticides is another option. This kind of pesticide is safer for the environment, but it won’t work as well. It is best to use pesticides in different ways so that insects don’t get used to them and stop being killed by them.
- Cover your plant with a fence. This can be anything from putting up a fence to keep out rodents or small animals to putting wraps around your fruit (plastic or paper wraps). This method is used when you want insects around (so they can pollinate the plants) but don’t want them to bother your fruits.
- Get rid of the pests where they live. Most of the time, ants and rats have their nests nearby. Look for these nests and kill them with rat poison or insecticide. The plant owner should keep an eye on these spots to stop the pests from coming back. It’s also a good idea to get rid of any weeds, dead leaves, or other trash that might attract pests.
- Put the plants in important places. Pests don’t like to be in places where they can be easily seen. Some pests will stay away from your plant if you put it in a place where people can see it and have a light source nearby. Mealy bugs are less likely to attack pitahaya that is grown in an open area with a lot of sunlight.
- Have baits to keep pests away. I’m not sure how well this would work, but some hobbyists try to avoid killing pests as much as possible. Instead, they used bait to keep the pests from going after their plants. For example, you could put out a bowl of sugar to draw ants away from your fruit trees.
- Put in predators and species that will compete with them. This can work well for organic farms and people who do this as a hobby. To bring in predators, we have to make the area good for them to live in (i.e pond for frogs, tree for birds and lizards). Predators not only add more life and interest to our lawn, but they also eat a lot. As long as their prey is around, they will eat the pests and make more babies, so the number of pests stays low. Like frogs, toads, and lizards, birds that eat bugs can eat a lot of them.
Snails are also eaten by frogs and lizards. Insects that eat other insects, like the ladybug, mantis, and tiger beetle, can be very useful because they can hunt in places where bigger animals can’t reach. Weaver ants eat caterpillars, but they also protect their territory by swarming and attacking other pests that come close. They can be good guardians for your plants, but when it’s time to harvest, you’ll need to find a way to get rid of them, too. Since weaver ants’ nests are in trees, they are easier to get rid of than other kinds of ants. Some farmers bring in owls and civets to eat rodents, but a couple of cats would work just as well in an urban setting.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are several ways to get rid of ants on a dragon fruit plant. The most effective way to get rid of them, however, is to use a combination of methods.
As has already been said, you need to figure out what kind of pest it is before you can decide how to get rid of it. Do you only treat plants that people eat? Are they now bearing fruit? Do they live in pots or the ground? Outside or in a greenhouse? How you deal with pests will depend on all of these things.
Before tell what to do, I would need to know what kind of pest you are dealing with. Most of the time, you can get rid of white flies with a simple soap and water spray. For more serious cases, like a boarer, you would need an oil or soap that kills bugs. Also, bringing in “good” bugs can help get rid of “bad” or unwanted ones.
For example, diatomaceous earth, is a natural pesticide that works very well and keeps many soft-bodied insects and caterpillars away. But, I wouldn’t count on that too much, because it doesn’t work on all pests. Soil health is also important because healthy plants are better able to deal with pests when the soil is healthy.
