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  • From: George Anna Clark <esac@laneta.apc.org>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] leaf cutter ants
  • Date: Wed, 09 Jun 2004 15:02:17 -0600

Vaya, Jason, good question... I'm in south central Mexico with the same "problem" - it ties for first with the white fly as our most economically damaging pest.

What I've learned... the cut leaves are for feeding acid-loving fungi in the ant hills. Thus, they love to carry citris peel down into their ant hills, and prefer this to just about anything else. This worked for me as long as I had a neighborhood "fast-food fruit vendor" and the time to pick up a bucketful of peels per day (long time ago).

They can't manage to pass over a plastic "skirt" when tied around trees: cut a strip of reasonably durable plastic - a few cms longer than the girth of the tree, and about 20 cms wide. Wrap the strip around the trunk below the first branch and tie it with a string towards the bottom of the plastic. Then fold the plastic down to make a skirt. This works wonderfully as long as the plastic doesn't collapse and touch the tree, or a plant stalk of some sort makes a bridge on or above the skirt. Requires checking periodically, but really does the trick.

What doesn't work: herbs that supposedly work for ants in the house:: like mint, etc. The leaf cutters devoured them. Sesame leaves... ditto. They also LOVE hibiscus and are now quite happily devoted to erasing a mound of cut branches which I left from last year's crop (i was going to compost them but if this saves this year hibiscus' crop I'll make this a practice). Intercropping hibiscus within the corn also didn't work... although maybe if I had planted the corn earlier????

People absolutely swear by the approach of putting ant manure from a "foreign" anthill in or beside or on top of the anthill you want gone. Some add that you have to get it from another city/state whatever to ensure that it is REALLY a foreign anthill. Supposed to cause internal caos, civil war, bloody massacres, etc. But it just hasn't worked for me, must have pacifist ants.

Two strategies which I haven't yet ruled out... pouring najayote (the liquid left over when boiling maize to make tortillas - a very alcaline substance) down the anthill. This obviously creates an alkaline environment, and the ants didn't appreciate it much, they closed old openings and made new ones. But I think you have to do this repeatedly for weeks, or get thousands of liters at once (quite possible in Mexico). Ant hills are long systems, and I would bet they have elevated places for their fungi -like gophers- to prevent flooding problems.

The other is sprinkling ground charcoal around the holes - supposedly messes up their sense of smell and they don't identify the food source. Perhaps this could work for protecting newly germinating plants, don't think it works if it's applied after they've found what they've looked for...

Other thoughts... my soil is slightly on the alkaline side, so I don't want to pour lime down the anthills, and acid-loving fungus could be a good thing. Also, the ants are making very loose soil out of rather compacted stuff. So if I can just keep them busy on the hibiscus plants... but this is wishful thinking, they do like a varied diet, besides those mentioned above... basil, young tomato plants, okra, sorghum, chives, motherwort. Have left the brassica and cucurbita (sp?) families alone... Unfortunately, the climate is poor for brassicas and the white flies love the cucurbitas...

good luck and PUL-LEASE report back if you find other ideas....
george anna

At 10:24 a.m. 08/06/2004, you wrote:
I am working in tropical agriculture in Panama and would like to know
information for controlling leaf-cutter ants





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