Beneficial Insects in the Garden
Which are the most beneficial insects? We’re talking about bugs that are good for plants in the garden and eat pests that would otherwise eat your plants. Find out and start thinking about which plants and flowers attract beneficial insects!
What Are Beneficial Insects?
The average backyard is home to thousands of insects, but you may be surprised to learn that only about a tenth of these are destructive. In fact, most are either beneficial or harmless. Beneficial insects fall into three main categories:
Pollinators: We depend on these insects—including bees, butterflies, flies, and moths—to pollinate our garden’s flowers.
Predators: These insects eliminate pests by eating them. Things like ladybugs, praying mantids, and green lacewing larvae fall into this category.
Parasitizers: Like predators, parasitizers also prey upon other insects, but in a slightly different way. They lay their eggs on or in the bad bugs, and when the eggs hatch, the larvae feed on the host insects. Parasitic wasps are the main member of this category.
Meet the Beneficial Bugs in Your Backyard
Everyone knows their bees from their butterflies, but what about the many other beneficial bugs? It’s likely that you’ve already seen these good guys in your garden, but maybe you weren’t formally introduced. Here are a few you might want to become acquainted with:
Ladybugs
Despite their delightful name and appearance, ladybugs are ferocious predators! Before they get their bright red colors, they start out life as larvae (pictured below), cruising around on plants and feasting on aphids. Did you know that a ladybug larva can eat up to 40 aphids an hour?
Green Lacewings
Adult green lacewings feed on pollen and nectar, but their larvae, which look like a mix between a slug and an alligator, prey upon soft-bodied garden pests, including caterpillars and aphids.
Praying Mantids
A praying mantis will make short work of any grasshoppers that are troubling you; these fierce predators will also hunt many other insect pests that terrorize gardens, including moths, beetles, and flies. Note, however, that praying mantids are ruthless and will also eat other beneficials, like butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds—and even each other!
Spiders
Spiders—though technically arachnids rather than insects—are often overlooked as beneficial, but they are very effective pest controllers. Since they are attracted to their prey by movement, they eat many live insects. Jumping spiders and wolf spiders (pictured) are especially good at keeping pests under control.
Ground Beetles
“Ground beetles” is the name of a large group of predatory beetles that are beneficial as both adults and larvae. They will eat a wide range of insects, including nematodes, caterpillars, thrips, weevils, slugs, and silverfish. While insects like Japanese beetles should be controlled in the garden, don’t crush every beetle you see!
Soldier Beetles
Soldier beetles are an important predator of Mexican bean beetles, Colorado potato beetles, caterpillars, and aphids. Like many beneficials, they are attracted to plants that have compound blossoms, such as Queen Anne’s lace and yarrow.
Assassin Bugs
Assassin bugs look like a strange mix between a praying mantis and a squash bug. They use their sharp mouthparts to prey upon many different types of insect pests in the garden. In their adult form, they can be mistaken for squash bugs, so look carefully before you squish something!
Robber Flies
With their extra-long legs, robber flies are bug-eating machines that we’re thankful to have on our side. They may look intimidating, but unlike horseflies, they do not attack humans (although they are capable of biting when threatened). Instead, they go after a number of common garden pests. Try not to shoo this fly!
Hoverflies
Another good fly to have in your garden, the hoverfly looks like a tiny yellowjacket without a stinger. They feed on pollen and nectar and are extremely important pollinators. Their larvae are voracious predators, killing aphids, caterpillars, beetles, and thrips by sucking the juice from their victims.
Parasitic Wasps
Parasitic wasps are very tiny, so you probably won’t see them at work. However, they are a very effective pest control.
Brachonid wasps lay their eggs on the backs of tomato hornworms and other caterpillars, forming those white cocoons you see on the caterpillar’s back (pictured below). If you see a parasitized caterpillar, don’t kill it. Instead, move it to elsewhere in your garden. The wasp larvae will take care of them for you and turn into more wasps, who will continue to do their good work in your tomato patch.
Trichogramma wasps are minuscule wasps (several of them can fit on the head of a pin) that lay their eggs inside the eggs of over 200 different insect pests, preventing the pests’ eggs from ever hatching in the first place.
The tachinid fly looks like just a small housefly, but is an active parasitizer of corn borers, gypsy moth caterpillars, grasshoppers, Japanese beetles, Mexican bean beetles, squash bugs, and green stinkbugs.
Attracting Beneficial Insects
Like all living creatures, beneficial insects have a basic need for water, food, and shelter. By providing these things, your garden will become an inviting home for them.
A diversity of plants will attract a wide range of insects. Many beneficials appear in the garden before the pests do and need alternative food sources such as pollen and nectar if they are to stick around.
Early-blooming plants, especially ones with tiny blossoms like alyssum, or biennials such as carrots or parsley that have been left to bloom, will help draw beneficials to your yard in the spring.
Later, they will be especially attracted to plants with compound blossoms such as yarrow, goldenrod, and Queen Anne’s lace and flowering herbs like lavender, mint, sage, dill, fennel, and lemon balm.
Remember that if you resort to using chemical pesticides to control insects, you will often kill good and bad bugs alike. Even the so-called “natural” pesticides like pyrethrum and rotenone will kill many beneficial insects.
https://www.almanac.com/beneficial-insects-garden
Good Morning!
The non-beneficial insects are my greatest gardening foe. Cleaned up the front yard garden and got into chiggers and seed ticks. Makes me not want to even go outside. They’re bad this year with all the rainwater they can drink in their travels. I’m buying some Sevin granules today to do my usual band around the house/yard. Also buying a new 5 gal bucket and will make up some permethrin solution to soak a set of clothes in and spray a pair of shoes with.
Six 4 x 8 box gardens (one has perennial strawberries), plus potatoes to go into the large (10 x 10) box garden on top of the hill.
Gardens are prepped and ready to go. We plant and the Lord gives the increase.
Good morning...it is like a glorius summer day here (fakes us out for a week in Spring) . I quit feeding the birds so they will eat more insects, maybe? Thanks for the article. Since we don’t spray our property (weed) as much as previous owners, we are seeing more beneficial host plants.
Got my cattle panels wired in place around last year’s inadequate front yard garden fence. So quick and easy. I’m going to be buying more of them for other things. My shop has turned into a goat shed because it’s open on the front so I can use panels to take care of that. They also get under the house because it’s up on poles and I haven’t finished the skirting. It’s time consuming but slapping up some panels will be a quick temporary fix. Also decided I’ll be fencing in the big garden area where the high tunnel’s going with these panels.
$2 a running foot which is twice the price of goat fence but I don’t have to deal with a roll or tensioning or setting posts sturdy enough for tensioning.
I have a bunch of 1” fiberglass sucker rods that come from the old oil wells. They’re a fiberglas composite really. Super strong and way easier to pound in than t-posts. I could make cheap gates from these panels too. Just add some square tubing for a frame.
It was more about keeping the bad bugs away.
I have my own super bloom of California poppies going on - they are all volunteers:
This is my George Burns rose.
And Trumpeter. I had the tree trimmers cut back my eucalyptus trees so this would bloom.
And this beautiful iris, that I got as a rhizome from a friend and decided to come up in my rock garden.
I caught someone stealing flowers - and I think succulents - from my median yesterday and ran out as fast as I could with my dogs - I told her NOT to do that, some had already been pulled up. I planted those for the neighborhood, not for her to come and take. She was apologetic, but I know things have been stolen out of there before.
One of my neighbors had a thief go through his front gate, into his gated yard and cut down ALL of his sunflowers last year. All caught on his Ring camera.
Zinnia bed went in this morning, including the Canary Birds. I put them on the end so I can keep an eye on them & harvest easily.
TO LINK BACK TO THE MAY 5 - MAY 12 2023 WEEKLY GARDEN THREAD CLICK ON THE PRAYING MANTIS SEARCHING FOR HER MATE ! ( ITS SNACK TIME! WHERE CAN HE BE!)
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!
It is a fantastic morning here! We had a big thunderstorm roll through late afternoon yesterday and we got a quarter inch of rain. I did a heavy watering in the morning out at the Garden and then we got the extra rain, so everything is really, really happy this morning. The spaghetti squash looks the best it’s looked since I planted it and my borage has finally perked up with new leaves as has the African Blue basil. I just cut back my sage a week ago which is blooming beautifully and I think I’m going to have to cut it back some more in the next day or so. I’ve never had Sage grow like this plant is growing.
The sky is clear blue, the air is “crispy” & cool as opposed to the mugginess we had all day yesterday. The birds are singing big time and the Robins are in the front field, getting a fairly easy worm meal. Squirrels are out & about - they’re all over the place. The song from Oklahoma keeps running through my mind: Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day!”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SoCVbt8d_Ho
Hubby found this - love him - great article on seed buying, good graphic too for reference.
https://deeprootsathome.com/4-ways-to-keep-monsanto-out-of-your-home-garden/