Ants got my potatoes:(

My potatoes are almost all dead. Here is what they looked like(healthy) on April 19th:

Ther potatoes are in the raised section to the left:



And in the wheelbarrow on the same day:



Then we had a couple of 100 degree days that killed off a couple. And now this. These 2 plants keeled ovr yesterday with ants seeming to come out of splits in the stems.:

yikes!....thats a lot of ants....

how long have your taters been in?....it is normal for them to die down and look awflul....if its been about 90 days then maybe the taters are ok down in the dirt....i sure hope that is the case.....i would pull a couple of plants and see what you got.....

so sorry....

hugs

rose

FamilyGardening wrote:yikes!....thats a lot of ants....

how long have your taters been in?....it is normal for them to die down and look awflul....if its been about 90 days then maybe the taters are ok down in the dirt....i sure hope that is the case.....i would pull a couple of plants and see what you got.....

so sorry....

hugs

rose

January 20th, Yukon Golds, but they had not flowered. I'm going to wait a couple of days for them to dry out (the bed got a real good watering a couple of days ago when the drip system was left on over night- everything else looks great). Plus I sprinkled some boric acid roach/ant powder around the outside of the bed and under the wheelbarrow and some DE in the beds to try to get rid of the ants.

I have posted all over the place about my infestation with earwigs. I put cooking oil (and in some added a little soy sauce) in cut down plastic cups to trap and kill earwigs. It has been very successful in catching earwigs but I noticed that they caught ants also! It is sure worth a try. I cut the cups down and left about 1-1/2 inches and poured in about a half inch of oil and about a 1/4 tsp. of soy sauce. In my potato bed I had lots of earwigs and ants and it caught lots of both. If you have plenty of ants outside the bed, you can use hot water and pour it over them a few times.

I would think that your potatoes in the ground should be ok. I don't know if they have to flower before they are ready to dig, someone else may know that answer. It may be that the stems were already starting to die off and cracked and the insides of the stems smelled and tasted good and the ants went after them. I'm not an expert on that. It sure looks like they are going to town on them!