Termites + Garden.

John came home from work today and was inspecting and weeding his planter in the back yard while I watched through the kitchen window. He pulled something out of the box and started inspecting it carefully and knocking dirt off the bottom and looking more closely at it. I came outside to see what was going on. “What kind of bug is this?” he said, handing me the rootless stem “It looks like white ants.” I looked at the shape of the insect coming out of the hollow of the stem. “Termites” I said. There was no doubt in my mind from the unique shape of the creature. He doubted my prognosis, believing termites only eat dead wood. I pointed out that termites are colony insects and there will me many more where those came from if he looked. Then he dug into the soil and found plenty of termites underground.

I've never seen this before in a garden. Just weird if he did not place it over a tree trunk or roots from a fallen tree. Ants would be a lot easier to deal with because they usually leave plants alone, just going after the insects, like aphids, around them. You can usually work around ants. But termites? I think his garden is a goner this year.

I am wondering what, if anything, he can do to save the rest of his work in the planter? They do not seem to be in the wood of the frame as far as we can tell. Don't know where they came from unless they were somehow already the cabbage seedlings he bought.