Beat garden pests by tucking in a diversity of plants wherever you can! Cuz healthy gardens are diverse gardens.
Aphids, thrips, flea beetles, and other pests can make a name for themselves with gardeners via the damage that they do. Think all insects are pests? Believe it or not, there are MORE beneficial insects in the garden than pests!
Beneficial Insects in the Garden
A healthy garden is a garden full of insect life! And, as gardeners, it's helpful to know which insects are working for us rather than against us.
Beneficial insects help to not only pollinate our plants but control pests that do damage. Growing a wide variety of plants will provide welcoming habitats for our insects friends so they can help fight our foes.
It can be so frustrating to spend our precious time and money on plants that then get devoured by pests like flea beetles, tomato hornworms, and aphids. One line of defense is to immerse yourself in the garden regularly to watch what going on, look for damage and to learn to distinguish between friend and foe.
An ounce of prevention
The most effective pest-prevention strategy of all is to grow a wide variety of plants that support beneficial insects. Beneficial insects include: the pollinators (bees, flies, butterflies, and moths), the predators (lacewings, damselflies, dragon flies, ladybugs and preying mantids), and parasitizers (tachinid flies and brachonid wasps). Spiders are beneficial predators too, although they're not classified as 'insects'-- they're arachnids.
If you have trouble with aphids in your garden you need to invite lacewings and ladybugs in-- they're fierce protectors of the garden! A single ladybug can eat up to 5000 aphids during its lifecycle. Lacewing larvae are known as aphid lions! But they also eat a wide variety of small insects, including thrips, mites, whiteflies, insect eggs, mealybugs, small caterpillars, and leafhoppers. And damselflies control mosquitoes!
Damselfly-- a gardener's best friend!
Beneficial Flowers = Beneficial Insects
Here are some of the many beneficial insects you'll can find in the garden when you embrace a diversity of plants and create lots of welcoming homes and habitats!
Calendula draws ladybugs, honeybees, bumblebees, and lacewings. Cosmos, coreopsis, caraway, cilantro/coriander, dill, fennel, and yarrow are also very attractive to lacewings.
Plant echinacea, Black-eyed Susans, and Mexican sunflowers to attract smaller beneficials, like hover flies. Hover fly larvae feed on aphids, thrips, and pest caterpillars.
Tiny, non-stinging parasitic wasps help to control cabbage worms, tomato hornworm, squash vine borers, and more! Plant yarrow, fennel, thyme, parsley, cilantro/coriander, Mexican sunflowers, and marigolds to invite these and other beneficials.
Assassin bugs love to feed on cabbage looper, flea beetles, aphids, and other garden pests. Some assassin bugs like marigolds, fennel and dill.
Assassin bug on the attack!
Dragonflies and damselflies are skilled predators, feeding on mosquitos, gnats, small moths, and midges. You can attract them with water features and by growing iris, cleome, coreopsis, Black-eyed Susans rudbeckia, Hummingbird sage, and zinnias.
Tachinid flies are parasitic flies that lay eggs on or inside other insects, and their larvae are known as parasitoids. The larvae can enter the host by chewing on its gut wall, and they usually develop inside a single host insect.
Hosts for tachinid fly larvae include cabbage looper, corn borer, potato beetle, and squash bugs. The larvae kill their host! And the adult fly is an excellent pollinator as well. Flowering feverfew, cilantro/coriander, dill, fennel, parsley, caraway, and buckwheat will draw tachinid flies and hover flies.
Tachnid flies attack many of our common pests!
Swallowtail butterflies are beautiful and very effective pollinators! Plant Mexican sunflowers, dill, fennel, cilantro/ coriander, and parsley to welcome them.
Swallowtail butterfly on Mexican sunflower bloom!
Bumblebees are gentle giants among bees and prolific pollinators. Plant Hornimun and Hummingbird sage, lemon balm, echinacea, Mexican sunflowers along with buckwheat to invite more bumblebees into your garden.
Bumblebees love echinacea!
IDing Friend and Foe
Being able to identify the insects in your garden at different stages of development will help you distinguish friend from foe. Many beneficial insects are the most effective in their larval stage, such as lacewings and ladybug larvae. Most of us are able to identify lacewings and ladybugs, but can you ID their larvae?
For help identifying the insects at every stage of their development check out this comprehensive overview, called the Bug Guide, provided by our friends at the Xerces Society.
Or you could choose to download an app to your smartphone to help you identify friend or foe in the garden insect world:
Picture Insect and Seek by iNaturalist are two options for getting started! Enjoy!
Your garden coach,
Theresa