The 5 Best Beneficial Insects to Have in Your Flowerbed Garden...

Lady Bug

One of the 5 best beneficial insects just happens to be the Ladybug. Did you know that this colourful bug is the most voracious predator of aphids, mites, thrips, whiteflies and mealybugs to name a few?

As in most years, I seem to have the most difficulty with my bad insects and worms in the spring, however I still worry about and check my plants throughout the growing season.

Continually watch for those curled up leaves on your Dogwood Shrubs or the tiny green worms on the underside of your Rose Shrub leaves. Just like in the image below (from my roses), these light green worms start out so tiny that you can hardly see them until they have already chewed holes in the rose leaves. You can spray with a mild insecticidal soap, or wash the shrub leaves with water using your garden hose.

Do not spray the soap in the sunlight of the afternoon. You can burn the leaves. And if using the water method, try not to in the evening. Leaving the leaves damp can be asking for fungus trouble.

rose worms

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Like using a multi-disciplinary approach with humans, taking care of your garden pests is also benefited by using a combination of pest control. For instance:

Step 1

keep your plants healthy. Water as suggested and fertilize
plant for the location
plant properly according to the instructions

Step 2

remove the pests if not by hand then by traps, such as a slug trap ect.
use enviro friendly insect spray

Step 3

try incorporating beneficial insects into your garden

Bad bugs don't like happy plants!

Ladybugs

Aren't Ladybugs just the best?

These tiny spotted beetles can devour hundreds of aphids a day. Actually, the adult lady bug can devour 5,000 in it's adult life span. My kind of good bug.

If you want to lure Ladybugs to your garden try planting Yarrow or a Butterfly Bush. The female lays 10 to 50 eggs daily on the underside of the leaves. Even the larvae eat 50 to 60 aphids a day!

To purchase your garden ladybugs, please visit my Gardening Store and click on the beneficial insect link on the top right hand side of the page.

Bees

Not one of my favorite beneficial insects since I have an allergy to them and they really seem to like me.

However, that being said, they really are quite gentle. Major pollinators, they complete the process of transferring pollen from the flower's anther to the stigma, which is crucial for fruit and seed formation. Bees are sensitive to pesticides, so be careful.

Praying Mantis

If you can spot them...great. Praying Mantis camouflage themselves quite well. These bugs grow to 5 inches long and love to prey on caterpillars, mites, leafhoppers and other soft-bodied insects.

The female can lay anywhere from 10 to 400 eggs (depending on the species) in a foamy mass (from a gland in their abdomen) attached to branches of bushes. The froth then hardens creating a protective capsule. This egg mass is called the ootheca.

Lacewings

How many Lacewing insects have you squished? I know that I have until I was told that these fragile bugs lay their eggs at night in aphid-infested plants. While the adult feeds only on nectar, pollen and aphid honeydew, the hatching tiny larvae eat many of the soft bodied insect pests and immature stages of many pest insects.

Plant Cosmos, Coreopsis Zagreb and Sedum Angelina to attract these beneficial good bugs.

Parasitic Wasp

The name doesn't appeal, does it? Parasitic Wasps lay their eggs inside the eggs of pests like cabbageworms, loopers and borers.

Ok, I changed my mind. I have a borer that almost destroyed my Golden Elder ...send in the wasps.

The infant wasp consumes the embryo of the pest. Most of these wasps, and there are over 200 species, are attracted to wildflowers.

What about companion planting to deter insect pests from your flower gardens?

Why not plant some companion flowers to draw the good predators to your flowerbed garden. Beat the insect pests in your garden, naturally. Try planting some of the flowers below to ward off whitefly and aphids and entice the lacewings, ladybugs, bees and wasps to call your flowerbed gardens home.

Biological control and using beneficial insects does take longer, but well worth the effort.

TIP: When using a mild soap based spray on your blooms take note that unlike other substances, a mild soap mixture has no effect on bees, lady bugs, praying mantises or lacewings.