Been having problems with ants eating/chewing on the new okra buds prior to blooming and some on the new blooms , resulting in deformed pods. Ending up with alot of curled pods and knots/bumps . We sprayed yesterday evening with compost tea with garlicpepper (habenero) ,molasses and seaweed added. Even sprayed the ground good around the plants. I checked the plants before I went to work this morning and the ants were there munching away. What else is there to do? I have read on another forum about putting vaseline or such on the stalks and they wouldn't crawl through it but that just doesnt sound like "The Natural Way" to correct the situation. Any suggestions?

Come on guys doesnt anybody have a natural cure besides Diazinon

I was told, by someone who was an organic gardener back in the 70's, that ants hate blood meal, and he used to sprinkle it around the bases of the plants. I've never tried it, but if the ants get bad this year, I'm going to.

Oh, I deal with this problem every year! I've tried putting orange oil/compost tea products, but this doesn't do much unless you drench the mound itself. I just keep hunting out the mounds. The good news is that I still get lots of beautiful okra!

Well I finally got them under control only by killing the mounds with mound drenches . Some were very hard to find because there wasn't a visible mound only a small hole in the ground hid under a leaf . Now before ya'll get the mental picture of me following an ant all over my garden to find the mound, the hole was about 18" from the stalks. Just had to pay alittle closer attention to the traffic. Also tried the blood meal but didn't see a difference , maybe because I went by the recommended application rate.