Fruit Trees

Can anyone help find the stuff to put on fruit trees to stop ants climbing up? Can't find mine. It is in a small jar, black and you paint it round the trunk and the blighters can't get up to the fruit.
Can't remember the name of it or where I got it.

grease band? there's different brands. Google/Amazon to see the range.

Thank you ena, grease was the word I couldn't remember. It's the brush stuff I prefer. Got it.

Paint on natural grease barrier £9-49 for 200gms off E-bay

Thanks Peter & ena, I couldn't get "paste" out of my head. I remember it now.

PS I recently read of this technique to control ants bout using anything toxic. Have not yet tried it, but it sounds credible.

Basically, it involved a tablespoon of uncooked white rice, ground in a blade type coffee grinder to an extremely fine rice powder. Put it close to ant runs, under cover to protect from rain.

Seems that they love the stuff and carry copious amounts of it back to the Queen. She gorges on the rice flour, which swells massively causing her to explode. Remains of the colony will then desert the nest!

dilute some vinegar in a spray & give it a squirt & they,ll be dead as soon as the vinegar hits them .

I don't see ants as a problem; I'm guessing that aphids are the problem and the ants are feeding on the honeydew created by aphids. Control the aphids and potentially the ant problem will go away.

I guess they may, or indeed may not, be a problem, depending on circumstances.

I have an area of block paving for car park hard standing, adjacent to both a cultivated area of garden and path from my front door to front gate.

Ants continually build nests under the paving blocks. They mine the sand from under the block paving, depositing 'pyramids' of excavated material upon surface of the blocks.

This results in subsidence of the blocks, which if not rectified, further leads to water pooling, and if frost, to spalling of the paving blocks.

Consequently, expense and more work awaits if I do not deal with ants.

Ena, when I lay any type of paving I lay on course gritsand mixed 10:1 with cement. It goes solid and never moves, but I also lay the gritsand over a 100mm depth of compacted crushed stone (150mm if it's for a drive).

Yes, when I have laid paving, I have done similar: a dry mix, and allowing ground moisture to set it. However the block paving referred to was not done by me. I will redo it if it deteriorates too much, but for now remediation of the damage has had to suffice.

Ena... we both sing from the same hymn sheet!