I hope someone can help me figure this out. I've planted morning glories and moonflowers from seed every spring for as long as I can remember, but I've never had this happen before. Something is eating the little buds before they can flower, resulting in a wall of beautiful morning glory leaves, but no flowers! I've tried to 'catch them in the act', and the only thing I've seen is what looks like a microscopic black ant, very tiny. I've tried the Safer Insecticidal soap, don't know what else to do. I've had one moonflower blossom and about three morning glories, though by now, I should have hundreds ! Any advice ?
Hi Morningglory, welcome to the Stew. I don't know what may be attacking your flowerbuds, but I do know that the drought conditions in my part of the country has a lot of creatures, including some insects, behaving oddly. Resorting to unusual measures to get the moisture they need. :-? Besides the insecticidal soap, I don't know what else you can do either, I try to stay away from harsh chemical insecticides because I have a lot of insect eating critters around, birds and lizards, toads and skinks and such, I wouldn't want to poison their lunch. I know it's not much consolation when your blossoms are being chewed to bits, but I take the view that when the bug population grows, something that eats bugs will notice and balance the scales. JMHO , someone else may be able to give you some ideas that sound better to you.
Those little tiny ants can eat tremendous amounts of plants in a short time. We have those here, too. I've tried about everything on them and they seem to multiply instead of dying. I keep watering them down but it doesn't help much. Dooley
I had this guy: http://www.lakewhatcom.wsu.edu/gardenki ... Beetle.htm The golden tortoise beetle, chewing on my morning glories....mine wasn't quite this dramatically gold, though...I've never seen the tiny ants, but I have lots and lots of lizards around. They seem to keep a lot of bugs under control.
Zuzu's petals has it right. One of my big yellow coneflowers fell down dead and turned out to be full of termites! Very dry here, indeed.
