thanks. I'm not sure if I should dig down to see how much fresh air is down there. It's in an awkward, small space. I guess I could try with a bamboo cane to encourage the earth down into the anty gaps. I don't want to dig the plant up and replant as it only went in a few months ago.
The clove oil water mixture needs to soak the compost or earth @ViewAhead, not just round the pot.
My plant was in a container, so I soaked some cotton rags, bundled these at the bottom of a larger container and sunk my plant pot within it. The ants ignored my efforts ... so I raised the plant above a large saucer of water, creating a swimming pool moat. That helped ... though ants can swim if they feel like it, in my experience.
Won't watering it well wash soil down into the gaps? It did when I had an ants nest in the roots of a plant, but I have light sandy soil - maybe it doesn't work on heavier stuff.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
It seems pretty caverous under there, but it's hard to tell as it is an odd spot. I pushed down the earth and it compressed a lot. I'll try to deal with the ants first and the honeycombing after.
So, today I applied five litres of cinammon water: one spice jar of out of date ground cinammon (40g) and five old cinammon sticks added to two litres of warm water for two days. Then the bottle topped up to five litres with warm water; Applied to earth that had been soaked with rain last night. I figure the rain might be a good thing for the test as the cinammon water won't run straight through. It looks like quite a big ants nest, with them running all over my doorstep and farming blackfly all over my new rose, so it should be pretty obvious when they have gone.
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@Fire - just try soaking it. No need to dig or poke.
I meant that there are mini caverns under my rose and I want to compress the earth so there is no fresh air whistling around the roots.