Ants are in our pest top five

Ants are keeping us more than just busy. Again one of these useful harmless insects ? Despite of the fact that ants belong to the social insects they do not at all behave as such in our garden.

In my previous post I told about the bamboo-shoots (the two white stripes, center-down). When I lifted the stone to uncover the shoots I also discovered an ant-nest. Here still in a more or less harmless state.

Unfortunately, after trying to be Buddhists, we gave up. I am sorry to say but pest-control based on chemicals and insecticide has eventually become an absolute necessity in our garden.

Harmless ants do not exist. We found out the hard way.

The photo below shows that ants have built their home (that is the sand in between the grass) in one of our Armeria Maritima (see groundcovers) that grows on the Turtle Island in the front garden. I only found out today, perhaps too late. Very often the plant will eventually die.

As indicated above we do not have any idea about and we have never understood how, ants are controlled in Japanese gardens.
And yes I tried to find out !
We have been unable to find anything on the subject in the context of the Japanese garden, neither on the Internet nor in any book. How is this possible and why ? We can only imagine that this is a great taboo, and that well kept secret-procedures must be in place for pest control even in gardens on Japanese soil.

There are many species of ant in Japan (see Ants) so the problem must also exist in Japan. This may very well be one of these public-secrets.
If you know how ants are controlled in gardens in Japan we would highly appreciate it if you told us.

Read the introduction in: Control of pests, weeds and diseases in Tsubo-en.