Protect the Vulnerable (Fur Babies) and Possibly Ants Too june 25, 2024

I’ve gone back and forth several times on whether I wanted to share what happened to one of our dogs a few days ago. The reason I didn’t want to put it up is I feel responsible for what happened, even though I had tried to prevent it and it was an accident. However, the whole point of my content is to show my progress and mistakes because we learn so much more from mistakes than just “how it goes when everything is perfect” tutorial. I am human and I make mistakes, many mistakes in fact, and I’m here to share my imperfections with the rest of you imperfect humans so that we may be better as a whole.

When we bought our house, the back yard was completely bare dirt. I wouldn’t call it soil, except for one small area, because it is hard, light tan, compact dirt. I know there is life in there, at least dorment life, but it was about as close to dead and one can find. In fact that should be one of my first microscope exercises is analyzing the unaltered soil in my yard. The only things that were back there were an old playground made of wood that is falling apart and a pond that hadn’t been used in many many years, full of cracks and just was pretty ugly. It still is ugly in fact.

The first year, we were planning our wedding so I barely did any garden. I planted along the back wall and it was mainly purslane, sorghum and blackeyed peas. It actually did pretty well. This year although I was a little late to finish, I put in about 150 square feet of garden space, between some raised wicking beds and a fenced in garden area in the middle of my back yard.

When we moved in, there were some cattle panels mounted on the back brick wall, and they were rotting and quite old but still functional, and I used them the first year/season, but I am putting cacti all along my back wall so I took the cattle panels down and used them for two sides of my fenced in garden area. They are about 20 feet and probably 5 or 6 feet tall. My gourds have completely enveloped one side, while the other side just has a few plants.

The west side is where I dug a two foot deep trench and filled it with wood, compost and composting materials, and a ton of other organic matter. I am not going to eat anything that comes out of that part of the garden for a year because I did add some things that probably had some pathogens, or at least went quite anaerobic. I was trying to make a compost tea and for one reason or another it didn’t go well, and I had a bunch of biochar soaking in it so essentially I charged the biochar up with potentially unwanted bacteria.

From what I have read, a year will be plenty of time for all the biology in the “hugelkultur” to balance out and everything will have broken down that was still composting. This is why I planted mostly gourds, for my wife to decorate, because we will not eat them. The rest of the plants are there to build up the quality of the soil.

As I have wandered from the point I was supposed to be getting at, I’ll go back to my 1 year old giant puppy. I was giving the dogs some food when I saw blood on the ground, and then I saw that our dog had a huge open wound on his shoulder area. It was several inches long and from what I could tell, at least 3/4 of an inch wide, and had gone through a few layers of skin. He wasn’t bleeding too bad and we were able to stop it quite quickly but since the wound was so large we needed to get it stiched/stapled up.

Luckily and randomly while we were trying to find the right place to bring him, we pulled over in a lot and there was a vet right there. He was able to see us right away and he cleaned our doggie up and gave him multiple stitches. Picasito, our dog, never expressed any discomfort the whole time. When he was coming out of the vet’s office he was running at us at full speed (he is not good on a leash, we are going to take a core obediance course to help communication between my wife and I and our dogs) and always had a cute smile on his face.

At first when I saw it, I kinda freaked out because for some reason my first though was that someone had dome something to him. It looked so bad, but then I thought a little and realized that it must have been a loose nail or something. I had gone around with a hammer previously to bend down or nail in any loose nails before, and the corners of my fence I built were protected with pallets, but some of the pallets had fallen. This is where he was injured. The vet said to look for a place with fur and sure enough on the edge of the cattle panel was fur and a piece of bloody metal sticking out.

I have done a much better job of protecting them but I need a better solution than stacking pallets on top. I am thinking of using pool noodles and maybe zip tying them along the edges of the fence. So just for everyone to think about anything that can hurt your animals in your yard. Not only is it scary and dangerous for them, but it is not cheap to bring them to the vet either. One hundred percent worth it, but better to prevent it that’s for sure.He is doing great, although it has started bleeding from one side every day since it was put in, but it stops quickly. I think he just moves a certain way and it pulls it apart, but right now it’s actually quite a large gap so he has an appointment today in an hour or so to get checked out again and maybe another staple. It definitely looks like it is healing well though.

To somewhat segway into another thing that’s on my mind today: ants. We have red ants and maroon ants in my yard, as well as the tiny ones. The maroon ones are leaf-cutter ants and the red ones I would say are fire ants. They are both very different. Leaf cutter ants are fascinating. They do not eat the leaves they collect but they bring them into areas in their nest where they grow a fungus on the leaves and that is what they consume. They are true farmers.

I first started researching about leaf-cutter ants last year when I was trying to get some sorghum established. It seemed that no matter how much seed I put down, as soon as it sprouted they would tear it down and take it to their nest. They would even drop a lot of them so there was a trail, and around their hole was a ton of bright green baby sorghum leaf pieces. I watched the ants taking down my sorghum and beas too I believe, with such efficiency and skill it is amazing.

At the same time I was not happy about it at all. I read on a local blog by a woman named Jana about the difficulties she has had with her leaf-cutters basically taking down whole trees, and I tried all kinds of organic methods. I did actually persist so much that I was able to convince them to relocate to my front yard where there is no garden. My next door neighbor has so much growth in her yard that they are not dependent on me, so I was fine with this arrangement.

About one year later, I am planting a whole lot more than I did the previous year, especially sorghum. A leaf cutter ant hole popped up right near the start of my sorghum patch and they took a few square feet of young sorghum sprouts, but the rest of the sorghum was pretty wet/moist at the time and I feel like that kept them from ravaging the whole field. Either way, they took a section but I had tons more so I let them have it without causing any trouble. I don’t have any issue with planting the ants their own sorghum garden because from what I read they disperse organic material, increase fungal content obviously, and their excrement as well all enriches the soil. So this year I have learned to live in harmony with them.

The fire ants I have read are kinda like scavenger ants. They find food all over. There are two fire ant holes near my compost so I’m sure they get a lot of great food from there, but I also spread sorghum all over the yard because it’s the beginning of monsoon season so if I can get some plants growing over all of my back yard I’m going to be a heck of a lot farther along on developing healthy living soil. Sorghum will grow without any supplimental water even in Tucson when its 115 degrees F. With extra water they get extremely tall.

So I threw a ton of seeds all over my yard to see where it would take, and I even gave the fire ants a handful just to make peace. Next time I went out there I swear they found every single seed I had thrown. Outside their nest was piles of seeds, and an immense number of ants. I’m worried that the fire ants may hurt the dogs sometime because there are just so many right now and there are a bunch of winged ones too. I’m not sure what that means but my gut says it’s not good.

So I wonder, should I do something to reduce or discourage the fire ants this year? Boron seems to work but more than a little and you risk having too much boron in your garden. Orange oil didn’t work on the leaf-cutters but maybe it would work for fire ants. The other technique I have tried is diatamaceous earth but then they just pop a hole up somewhere else. I don’t want to fight nature and it’s critters but I also am responsible for taking care of my dogs.

Has anyone had issues with their dogs and ants? Any other comments or advice are welcome!

Thanks for your time.

Love,

Nichollas