Post by hedgeapple on Jun 10, 2023 13:27:51 GMT -6
Fire ants do seem to love okra flowers, but that pod destruction does look familiar to me. I have to admit that I’m surprised, hedgeapple, that you’ve not seen that with your time in Texas. Being from Virginia, I had long thought of ants as just a natural part of the garden with no harmful qualities. Having fire ants go after okra, corn, and even potatoes was definitely a shocker to me when I moved here..
I was driving back from a meeting farther out in the Texas Hill Country last month and was on a long stretch on interstate listening to an interview with a scientist who also ranches in Texas. He has written a new book on the ecology of the area, and the interviewed ranged over many topics. One was fire ants, and he was discussing a biological control that is being implemented in many areas. I can’t remember the details as I was giving a good bit of attention to the road at the time, but it did sound promising. He was discussing the fact that fire ants eat hatching eggs of reptiles, and that is really harming the populations of many reptiles in the Texas Hill Country.
Here’s a link to the book that was being discussed. It’s a fairly long interview, but I do remember that I loved hearing the part about dung beetles. I also was amused that this scientist had named his ranch “Double Helix Ranch.”
www.tpr.org/podcast/the-source/2023-05-18/exploring-the-natural-wonders-of-the-texas-hill-country
I even lived in the Hill Country during drought and never saw ants eat the pods. I do use fish emulsion to foliar feed all of my plants. Could be that, or I just got lucky. I would harass every fire ant mound I saw with boiling water, but usually they would move two or three times before those colonies would give up on my yard.
Have heard about them introducing natural predators of fire ants to mitigate the situation, but don’t know if that has worked at all.