My Garden Is Being Eaten

So, since we moved house we now have a garden that we can actually do something with. If it wasn’t being eaten away as fast as it can grow.

We have a ton of these leaf cutter ants that can literally strip a 6 foot bush in a day. We’ve got through about a kilo of ant powder, had the garden sprayed with insecticide and still it has no affect.

They really are fascinating to watch though, they march in lines following a pheromone scent that they lay down, then carry pieces of leaf that are about three times their size back to their nest. They don’t actually eat the leaves, they use them to create an environment in their nest where a fungus can thrive and then they eat the fungus. They are pretty smart too, they wont eat a plant until it dies, they leave just enough of it left so that it can regrow and then they go elsewhere for a while only to return a few weeks later.

Smart and fascinating as they are though, I still want to kill them.