How to Encourage Beneficial Insects
- 1). Grab a magnifying glass and learn to recognize the beneficial insects you're hosting. Know ladybugs with their classic spots, lacewings (1/4-inch bodies with big, clear wings), hover flies that look like little choppers, and overgrown houseflies called tachinids.
- 2). Meet their simple needs in your garden: water and shelter as well as bugs, pollen and nectar to eat. You've got the bugs, so wet some rocks in a clay saucer daily and plant a diversity of flowering plant types and heights to provide shelter and food.
- 3). Shop for beneficials where you find organic gardening products and at specialty retailers. Look for live insects to introduce, and for prepared formulations to spray for specific infestations.
- 4). Encourage beneficials as part of your overall pest management program. Walk the garden daily to see who's eating whom - be sure the ones you stomp are eating your plants and not each other.
- 5). Grow the plants the good guys like to eat. Go for small flowers on large and small plants from many families, including asters, yarrow, sweet alyssum, lantana, joe-pye weed, oleander and coreopsis.
- 6). Encourage wasps - parasitic and predator wasps, not the stinging kind - that eat scale and cabbageworms. Plant fennel and sweet clovers away from the house and near the garden so they'll nest there.
- 7). Keep most of the bugs you buy from flying away with three steps: Avoid spraying the garden right before release, then water the garden well and release the insects on the ground under plants in the evening.
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