Ant hunting belt is a reliable and cheap means for protecting fruit trees
If ants attacked your garden in early spring, you can simply spray the trees with insecticide and forget about insects for a long time. But in the summer, when the harvest is ripe, this option will not work and it is more expedient to use a trapping belt from ants. This is an equally effective remedy, and against other pests too. In addition, it is absolutely safe for the future harvest, and for the gardeners themselves, and it will cost you cheap, unlike good chemicals. For the manufacture of belts, they often use improvised means that are in every home. What is such a belt, how does it "work" and what can be made of?
How the trapping belt works
Some gardeners prefer not to touch the ants, claiming that they are good for the garden. On the one hand, this is true, because thanks to them, you can get rid of various small insects. Ants eat them and do not allow them to breed. But at the same time, they themselves bring into the garden one of the most unwanted pests - aphids... If you leave everything as it is, soon you will not recognize your trees. Aphids will stick around the leaves, especially young ones, and prevent crops from developing normally. Therefore, fighting ants is not only possible, but also necessary.
The main purpose of the belt is to prevent insects from climbing the trunk to the crown of the tree, to the leaves and fruits.
Depending on the technology and materials of manufacture, belts have a different effect:
- they simply serve as a barrier that the ants cannot overcome;
- act as a kind of trap for insects that have climbed onto the trunks.
Ant hunting belt: manufacturing options
There are many ways to "dress" trees in protective clothing, and they are all effective in their own way.
For example, you can make a belt from the following materials and components:
- Vegetable oil. Cut a long strip from an old cotton T-shirt. Moisten it liberally with oil and tie the barrel. Ants do not like this smell, which, moreover, interrupts their own, and will not rise above the belt. Moisten it with oil periodically to keep the belt moist and fragrant all the time. You can also make a trap belt out of oil. Wrap a wide piece of rubber around the tree and glue the ends together. Tuck the bottom of the rubber up to form a funnel. It remains only to pour oil into it, and the ants will drown there.
- Strips of paper, burlap, glass wool, padding polyester. The point is to make something like a skirt on the trunk, forming a funnel. Crawling to it, insects will rest against the obstacle and will not be able to overcome it. You can make the funnel pointing downward (to protect against ants climbing the tree) or upward (from those who will descend). Remember to check your belts and peel off ants.
- Resin, tar. Wrap burlap around the barrel and apply your chosen ingredient. The pests will stick and die.
Ant catching belts will be most effective if installed in time. Try to have time to tie the trees in early spring, until the leaves appear, and when the harvest is ripe.
If you wish, you can buy ready-made tape belts with an adhesive trap. If chemistry inspires more confidence in you, wrap the trunks with cloth and treat it with any insecticide.Instead, you can also use special preparations, such as Creolin or TM "Green Belt" aerosol glue.