Ants on cucumbers: why it happens & prevention
Do your garden cucumbers have ants? They enjoy your vegetables hard for various reasons. In this article, horticulturist and former organic farmer Sarah Hyde explores why ants are attracted to cucumbers, what to do if you notice them, and how to keep them from getting around your cucumbers! You're out in your garden, enjoying a beautiful day when you notice an unusual amount of ants on your cucumber plants. What are they doing there? Why are they only on your cucumbers? Is there something particularly attractive about this popular garden vegetable that is so attractive to ants?
There is a short answer and a long answer to this question. In this article, you will learn all the details of the long and short versions! But it all depends on what attracts ants to your cucumbers and how to prevent them in the first place. Interested in learning more? Let's continue to think about why ants love cucumbers in your garden and how to deal with it. We'll get to the most important aspect, how to prevent them from getting there in the first place.
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Long answer
There are many reasons why ants may be on your cucumber plants. This is mostly because they are busy enjoying the "honeydew" produced by aphids. Honeydew is a sweet, sticky sap secreted by aphids that ants feed on. Ants are known to "farm" aphids, meaning the ants protect the aphids and the bee from other predators.
Take a moment to see what the ants are busy doing. They can lead you to an aphid hot spot! You may find small, gray, white, or green bugs about the size of a ballpoint pen tip. Aphids congregate in the shelter of nooks and crannies on the undersides of leaves.
Aphids are small
Aphids are small, soft-bodied insects that can be green, white, gray, yellow, or even red or brown in color. They are pear-shaped and have almost invisible legs. Adult and nymph (immature) aphids are almost identical except for differences in size.
Aphids can make any kind of cucumbers their home. However, you will often find melon aphids, which vary in color from dark brown-red to yellow or white. They are commonly found in cucumbers.
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Lice prevention and treatment
Aphids are difficult to get rid of in any garden situation. Viewing the garden through an integrated pest management (IPM) lens, and completely eradicating aphids is difficult, but not impossible, and is not a realistic goal. Instead, IPM recommends implementing cultural and physical controls first. These aim to prevent and then use chemical control as an absolute last resort.
Cultural controls for aphids include checking replacement plants for aphids before planting to avoid introducing aphids to the garden and looking for wild plants adjacent to the garden that are natural habitats for aphids. Choose CMV-resistant varieties in the seeds you grow and buy only disease-free transplants. Another cultural control for aphids is to prune or space plants so there is adequate ventilation between leaves, as aphids prefer tight, protected spaces.
Aphids thrive on plants that are given too much nitrogen, so don't use more fertilizer than your cucumbers need, and follow the manufacturer's application instructions.
Getting rid of ants in cucumbers
Ants congregate where aphids are present, but they rarely cause damage because the ants are interested in the hive. If you work on plants, ants can be unpleasant if they crawl on you or bite you.
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Lice prevention and treatment
Aphids are difficult to get rid of in any garden situation. Viewing the garden through an integrated pest management (IPM) lens, and completely eradicating aphids is difficult, but not impossible, and is not a realistic goal. Instead, IPM recommends implementing cultural and physical controls first. These aim to prevent and then use chemical control as an absolute last resort.
Cultural controls for aphids include checking replacement plants for aphids before planting to avoid introducing aphids to the garden, and looking for wild plants adjacent to the garden that are natural habitats for aphids. Choose CMV-resistant varieties in the seeds you grow and buy only disease-free transplants. Another cultural control for aphids is to prune or space plants so there is adequate ventilation between leaves, as aphids prefer tight, protected spaces.
Aphids thrive on plants that are given too much nitrogen, so don't use more fertilizer than your cucumbers need, and follow the manufacturer's application instructions.
Getting rid of ants in cucumbers
Ants congregate where aphids are present, but they rarely cause damage because the ants are interested in the hive. If you work on plants, ants can be unpleasant if they crawl on you or bite you. Otherwise, ants generally do not eat or damage cucumber plants. Ants are often beneficial to humans and the ecological world. Ants clean up messes ranging from animal and insect carcasses to decaying plant matter.
They are difficult if not impossible to get rid of in any garden situation. There are many of them in well-established colonies deep underground to eradicate them. From an IPM perspective, the complete elimination of ants is not realistic, but there are cultural and physical controls to discourage ants. No matter how beneficial or nuisance ants are, it is wise to discourage ants from further protecting aphids. A physical control for ants is to use a broad strip of diatomaceous earth at the bottom of your garden beds to prevent them from climbing cucumber plants. Unfortunately, ant baits or poisons do not work reliably for long-term control of ants outdoors because there are constant sources for new ants to move in.
Final thoughts
Finding ants in your cucumbers may have led you down a rabbit hole or an ant hole in this case! You may have learned more than you thought when you first started reading about ants and aphids! Aphids and ants can be a frustrating problem for gardeners growing cucumbers and any other crop.
Be diligent in your prevention and control efforts and avoid stressing small aphid populations. Continue to work to improve soil health and encourage beneficial insect predators in your garden. By using a combination of physical, cultural, and biological controls and prevention, aphid and ant problems can be greatly reduced.
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