When pests are eating your garden you may be tempted to fire up the sprayer and lay waste to the invading hordes. Please don't. There are many good insects that will be quite happy to help you by eating the pests. Birds, lizards, toads, salamanders, frogs and shrews will also help if they have habitat -- but that is another post.
Ladybugs (or ladybeetles) may be the best known of our predators. These little orange and black eating machines are big trouble for aphids, mealy bugs and scale insects. The larvae look a little like gray dragons and are voracious feeders. Ladybugs like alfalfa, angelica, marigolds and ragweed, among other plants.
Assassin bugs eat Mexican bean beetles, caterpillars, Colorado potato beetle, leaf hoppers and occasionally a honeybee. They will bite fingers! Alfalfa, Mexican tea, ragweed and carrots are their favored plants.
The big-eyed bug is a small (1/4 inch long) critter with an appetite for leafhoppers, blister beetles, aphids and spider mites. Adults and nymphs are carnivorous. They overwinter in garden litter. Alfalfa, carrots and oleander plants will attract them.
Adult Braconid wasps feed on nectar from Apiaceae (carrot family), and the Asteraceae (daisy family). The adult wasp lays her eggs in the bodies of host insects. The larvae feed on the body of that insect and pupate on the outside. Host insects include aphids, beetles and caterpillars.
Ichneumon wasps lay their eggs in the bodies of caterpillars or in places where their grubs can attack a suitable host. The larvae eat the host which usually dies after the wasp pupates and eats its way out of the host. Alfalfa, tree of heaven, rue, fennel and oleander are among their preferred plants.
These are just a few of the insects that can help you keep more of your garden's goodness for yourself. Invest in some of their favorite plants and they'll be around to eat the pests for you. If you go after the pests with that sprayer you will be killing the good along with the pests.
No comments:
Post a Comment