Invisible Gardener with Andy Lopez

Don’t panic

It’s organic

The Invisible Gardener presents Dances with Ants


So I got a cup here and I'm going to take a cup of this really nice—almost too much, I'm going to take about not that much. This is a very fine clay. It’s actually qualified as rock dust and this is very fine, it’s called alluvium clay. The reason why I use this is a very highly bacterial active, a very highly mineral active. This comes from the underground thermally heated place.

Then what we’re going to do is we’re going to take Mongolian fire oil, actually this is called hot chili sesame oil. I also use the Mongolian fire oil but this is hot chili sesame oil. I'm going to take this to the top off and we’re going to put some in here, this part of the mixture. We’re actually starting a met scientist series. This is my scientist voice. Okay, so I'm going to figure out how to put the top of it again. And then add some water to it. The trick is just enough water so we can use it as a paste, so I'm going to add some water to it now, and then I'm going to take my magic stirring stick, and see what we can get out of this mixture.

You see solid here at first, so we’re going to mix it up. The way I like to get this over my face. People pay a lot of money for this, I think they call it a clay facial or something. And actually what they do in hot spas in places around the world is this comes up hot and they get into the hot clay bask.

So we’ll go ahead. Now, we have already set up, I'm going to go over here to this—we were here yesterday last week at the centrosphere that has asked us to come in. so we’re going to make a barrier, see plants for climate.

I love working with mud. This is what it is really it is mud.

Are we here? Sorry. So you see I just take a little bit of this wonderful mud and basically we’re going to start making a little barrier around the tree. All it needs is just a little lime and this type is much better to use than the tangle foot. Tangle foot is basically beeswax mixture that is made, so it gets really—the problem is that it gets hard and destroys the—who’s that? That was my voice.

Okay, I'm going to make a little line all the way around here and get some of the stuff. So this is my wonderful clay mixture which is we’re just making. I'm going to go ahead and go on this side over here and give it a little line like this. So we have this clay line all the way around. Some people don’t know how to be as tactical as—tactical, I mean use your hands.

So this is the powder that we’re going to put right on top here like this. See, it’s making a nice powdery form, very dusty. They won’t like that at all. There you go. Now, we’ll go and make a mixture that we can spray on the tree to keep the ants off the tree—that’s on the tree, off the tree.

Okay so we made a dust. I just want to do a dust and a liquid. So this is a second formulation for a spray that you can spray onto the citrus because remember we put the dust through on and we want to get the ants off the rest of it and telling we don’t want them to be on there. So we’re going to be using different mixtures. So this is one formulation.

I got canola oil. Okay, so I'm going to take—it’s roughly, this is going to be a half a cup of canola oil, so it’s going to go like that. That’s going to be a half cup of canola. So I put that kind over here. I put that into my favorite sprayer. Then we’re going to take the rest of my—this is the hot chili sesame oil. Sesame oil is very good but they also make the Mongolian fire oil, any kind of really nice hot chili kind of oils. So we’re going to take and put that in there. It should be roughly about third of a cup. So this is going to be a third of a cup and we’re going to put that. This is two gallons here, so this is two gallons we’re talking about.

So we’re going to take this hot chili sesame oil and pour that in there. Again, we have smell and vision. It makes me hungry. And then we’re going to take some of my favorite stuff, this is orange TKOs, it’s a pure clean citrus product. It does not have petroleum distillates in it. If you have smell and vision you’d be crazy over this because you're going to be smelling the sesame oil, you're going to be smelling the citrus and you're going “what”.

So again the amount about the same half a cup. Is that a half a cup? No. Okay, half a cup. So remember all half a cup is all going into this two gallon mixture. So then we’re going to go ahead and I'm going to go and add some water and I’d be right back. So I fill it up with water, I gets nice and foam you see. I'll go ahead and close it up and then we’ll pump it up and we’ll spray this citrus here from the top down to get rid of any ants that are already on there.

Ants will figure out a way to get back in and off and so this is just way to help release this tree from all these ants that are trying to get up of it because remember it causes diseases. So we’re going to go ahead and spray it up in here to get all the ants that are already on the tree.

Now, this is tree is full of bees and stuff and this mixture won’t kill the bees. The citrus won’t kill and neither will the oil only the ants and maybe all soft bodied creatures. So we’re going to go ahead and spray only to this section over here like this, and then I'm going to go over to this side over here. Basically just work my way around, they’re going to be up in here a little bit, up in here with the ants.

If you get some on you that’s okay, just close your eyes, there's nothing really bad in here to you. As a matter of fact I kind of like the sesame smell. So here we go, I'm spraying like this, spray up in there, spray those in there. So just go ahead, give it a little bit up so the oil will stick around. See the oil will stay on there, it smells like sesame oil. The ants will not like it at all. They get it on their little bodies and their little legs, let say run up and down. It will keep them off for a little while. Next week we’ll come back to apply it on again because the thrill is the ant all the way around in here.

One of the things we’ll do is we’ll set up 00:08:02, I’ll show you how to use that because that’s all the really long-term solution to ant control is to get the ants to go out. Give them the food they want because that’s what they do. They’re going for some food here for citrus you see.

Okay, here’s some one of my med scientist mixtures. Inside of here you got ructus, that’s just a little pelletize, this is pelletize rock dust. You have cottonseed mill. You have feather mill. You have a variety of other things that goes mix in together. I got alfa mill. So I’ll tell you about the mixture in one of my med scientist episodes. And also it has micro rice in it, it has some seaweed in it. All bunch of really good stuff.

So we’ll go ahead and hear we have a citrus. It’s just a little bit down and out, you can see she’s not really totally happy. We put all the mulch and mixture underneath there but I think she needs a little bit of some good food. You can see some of the tips they’re starting to—let’s see if I can find spot. Right up here you can see it’s starting to get new growth. Just a little week. So we’re going to go ahead and come over here and give a good hand for this.

I come over here and give it to this one and do the same thing with it. We go ahead and move this part way too high apella tree until we get a—we’ll move that to get right to the—see, there you go. That’s what she wants.