Property Borders - Advice for a New Landowner

[DanielP]

Any plant material that you import should be tested for fire ants before you bring it home. Insert a small stick into the surrounding soil with a tiny dab of peanut butter on the end. Ants will show up in a couple of minutes.
Low maintainance= Native jungle. If anything, hand clear and plant bananas.
Dan

[csgray]

A few last warnings about little fire ants, only a few can start a new nest, because they have multiple queens, and they travel on their own as well as seem to be wind born. So even if you are very careful about what you bring home, if your neighbors aren't, or if they have a yard/landscape service that services a site with LFA, or if you are downwind of a jungle lot where people have dumped infested vegetation, you can end up with them.

Plan ahead, DO NOT plant landscape plants that are preferred by the LFA. They seem to love almost all trees, but thrive on palms. Palms, especially coconut palms, become LFA condos very quickly, and they will make yard cleanup pure misery. Keep the area right around your house open, plant any trees well back from the house, especially on the windward side of the house. When they show up (not if in Puna) do not fart around and let them get a firm toehold, instead defend the perimeter of the house and do the best you can with the rest of your lot. An acre of anything but grass is hard to keep LFA free.

When they first showed up on this island they were in only a few nurseries in HPP, the Ag dept. could have stopped the spread, but chose to ignore them because it was only Puna. Now they are spreading rapidly, and the Ag. Dept. is still dragging their feet. The end result could easily be a total embargo on Ag. products from Puna, or even the Big Island, which would devastate our local orchid, flower, and foliage farmers.

Carol

[csgray]

This is the website for the LFA research here in Hawaii. They really need people to report infestations and what control methods they are trying.

http://littlefireants.com/

Carol

[Rene Siracusa]

Lot's of really knowledgeable suggestions and ideas for you here. I would just like to comment about planting setbacks from your property line. When your adjacent neighbor is ready to develop, any of your plantings that cross the line can be chopped off with impunity. The neighbor does not have to carefully prune his side of your plants or ask your permission - and can do a lot of damage that will affect the part of the plant that is on your side. So it is good to plant at least a 5' to 10'(for trees and plants with a spreading habit)setback. And to prevent the neighbor from then thinking that those 5-10' are his, keep your stakes and string nice and visible from his side.