Who Are The Good Bugs?
As I was listening to a gardening radio show the moderator answered someones question about garden spiders, which tend to be prolific in the garden during the late summer. As he put it, they are fattening up for the leaner winter season, but that makes them “the good guys”, eating up insects destructive to the garden. So, besides garden spiders …just who are the good guys among the creepy crawlies of the garden?
- Lady bugs- no surprise here. They eat aphids (their favorite meal), scale, mealy bugs, leaf hoppers, and more.
- Beneficial nematodes ( there are bad ones, too) are microscopic insects, but they really go after a number of the bad guys like flea larvae, cutworms, corn root worms, strawberry weevils, white grubs, gypsy moth larvae, cabbage root maggots, fungus gnat larvae. Quite a list but not nearly an exhaustive one. You can buy them to add to your garden.
- The praying mantis, my personal favorite, fun to watch they prey on a large numbers of insects. They also tend to stay around the garden
- The pretty lacewings, in their larval form are death to small caterpillars, aphids, and other similar insects.
- Ground beetles. UGH, but they are good guys and eat other insects.
- Tachinid flies, parasites of other insects, look like houseflies, and little trichogamma wasps are are also good at keeping insect populations controlled. You can see the little white eggs attached to caterpillars.
- Dragonflies and damselflies, so beautiful and such graceful notes in the garden also benefit it by eating aphids.
The three most important beneficial insects in the home landscape ? Ants, spiders, and ground beetles which - according to ‘Gardening and Yardening‘ have a scurvy bunch of names such as:
- Assassin Bugs
- Soldier Beetles
- Minute Pirate Bugs
Your own little mercenary army.
I had purchased some praying mantis egg cases when I first moved to my country place, and they were resident here for years. Eventually, though, they have suffered total attrition here- either due to some county spraying, or farmers, or eventually moving off. I miss them and in the spring it will be time to again replenish them on the land here. The cases were from Mellingers (out of business now), I believe, and they look like small grayish pieces of styrofoam if you’ve never seen them. When conditions are warm enough the tiny mantids break out in a small horde of hungry little predators. They are really sort of cute.The adults often stay around and lay their egg cases on stiff, but light, stems and I used to see them when weeding in the fall. Should you chance upon them in a place you don’t like you can move them to some branches in a shrub.
Now don’t say I didn’t warn you, but if you follow this link to the power of the praying mantis you will see some pictures not for the weak of stomach. You may not be inclined to support the praying mantids with as much enthusiasm, but remember that they do eat lots of bad bugs!
More on biological controls.
More on Praying Mantis.
More on the Ladybug.
