Dahlia help: Ants

[Ofalltheginjoints]

Hi

I am very new to gardening, we moved in January and for the first time we have some outdoor space which is small but have several pots of flowers, all of them seem to be doing ok except for my Dahlias.

I have two in deprecate pots and the largest one seems to be crawling with ants and what I presume are ant eggs, I’ve had a look online and there seems to be different methods for dealing with it, cinnamon, diluted washing your liquid or ant killer, I don’t want to hard the plant so any help would be hugely appreciated

Thanks

No, they won't be ant eggs. Ants lay their eggs in underground nests. They may be aphids - ants are attracted by the honeydew they excrete. So your problem is the aphids not the ants. Try spraying with water with just a dash of washing up liquid. Aphids breathe through their skin, so by thoroughly wetting them you drown them. The washing up liquid doesn't kill them - it's there just to improve the wetting properties of the water.

Thank you! And thinking of it logically am of course ants nest underground, I’ve sprayed the plants, is it worth trying to wipe off the aphids?

is it worth trying to wipe off the aphids? Yes, well worth it. I do it between finger and thumb. They're mainly water, so it's not as revolting as you'd imagine.