Finally, I went around harvesting okra pods with my best sharp steel scissors. I've got two four by eight beds dedicated to that traditional Southern crop this year, and the pods are poppin'. They sever with a satisfying snap, as real force is required to get through the thick stem. The yield has picked up as the season has progressed. There's a nice fat gallon bag filled in the freezer, with far more yet to come. Batter fried okra and bhindi masala awaits.
But as I moved to the second of the two beds, I noticed a shadowing on the leaves and flowers a single one of the plants. Uh oh. Okra is pretty resilient, but the truth of gardens is that everything in the world wants to eat them. As I approached, my fading middle aged eyes only saw a dark stippled fuzz. Fungal growth? Perhaps. I couldn't tell without my reading glasses, so I used my other senses. I reached out and touched the greyness with an index finger. It was sticky. I held my finger to my nose, and sniffed. Sweet.
Not fungus. Aphids. Drat.
I went and grabbed my glasses from inside, then peered at the leaves to confirm. Yup. Black Aphids, a great bumper crop of them. They were sucking the life from the flowers, and were a grey living hoarfrost suckling on the shaded underside of the leaves.
I'd had another species of aphid devastate several kale crops a few years back, but hadn't had these particular little devils about yet. As I mused on how I might destroy them, I noted that the aphids weren't alone.
All across the thickly blighted leaves were hundreds of small black ants. They streamed up and down the stalks. They moved delicately across the dense masses of feeding aphids. Ahah, I thought. Farmers.
Ants are remarkable for many things, and one of the peculiar outputs of their distributed social intelligence is insect agriculture. Aphids poop out honeydew, a sweet sugar-rich byproduct of their digestion, and so ants will gather and tend herds of aphids. Think teeny weeny dairy herders, and you're not far off. They'll eat some of the aphids, too, and while I can't confirm they use aphid leather as clothing, I wouldn't put it past the industrious little beggars. I'd never seen it in action before, not that I can remember.
It's cool if you're an entomologist, but rather less so when you're a gardener.
The more I looked, the more I discovered the aphids, dense on the flower clusters, or squirreled away by the veins of a leaf. Everywhere, they were tended by ants. My early fall okra harvest was under threat. I mixed up a spray bottle or two with a mixture of soap and water, which weakens the aphids. I doused every one of their colonies, and let that set for a while.
Then out came the garden hose, set on "Riot Suppression." I revisited their leafy pastures, and blasted the aphids bodily from the plants. It was rather satisfying.
Ants are great pollinators, and generally garden-friendly, but once they've brought their livestock to feed, they've crossed a line. They're not working with me, but against me. The plants so carefully placed will wither and perish under that excess burden. In pursuit of their sweet honeydew harvest, ant and aphid alike are taking more than the garden can give, and no gardener is obligated to tolerate that.
As I rewound the hose, I found myself musing on the ramifications of that idea. I glanced for a moment skyward. Nestled in the sprawl of the 'burbs, where all is steel and concrete and sticky sweet hyperabundance, I looked at the August sky, the blue tinged by the haze of far-off wildfires. I considered how much more we take than can be given. How much more we have than is mindful.
For a moment...in my mind's eye, and all...I visualized a great nozzle in the heavens, clicking the nozzle to "jet."
It wouldn't be the first time.
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