I found to my irritation that the dahlias in the garden were absolutely smothered in blackfly. As I don't use chemical sprays, I hoped that the birds I had so lovingly fed during the winter or other predators encouraged by the flowers, would polish them off.

Then I noticed that ants were climbing up and down the blackfly and I got all excited thinking that the blackfly were about to meet their maker. But they didn't. The quantities kept increasing until I was forced to spray them with soapy water and rub them off. Not my favourite garden task.

Yesterday I read an article that appears to solve the mystery of the blackfly's survival. Apparently ants protect them! They do this because they want to eat the honeydew excreted by blackfly as a source of food to take back to their nest. Presumably this means that other natural predators are scared off by the prospect of itching for hours afterwards.

To overcome the ant protection, the article suggested a tip: smear the base of affected plants with jam so that the ants have an alternative food source and leave the blackfly unprotected. You what? Another tip that seems to offer the chance of letting unwelcome visitors to your garden flourish whilst turning it into a weed/pest-infected wilderness that resembles a municiple landfill site. I don't think so!

I realise this is a wildlife group, but I now know that the next battle in this war is to kill the ants and blackfly in one go by attacking them with a spray of water from the hosepipe. I hope such behaviour won't get me barred from the wildlife group on the basis that ants have rights too, but you got to be cruel to have dahlias and beans.