Today’s Garden Ideas

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Every year gardeners all over the world try to rid their beautiful flowers and vegetables from nasty, unwanted pests. However, all of the pesticides and home remedies for getting rid of those pests can be very harmful, even if they are organic. This is because there are some pests that you want in your garden. There are some pests that will help your garden thrive and bring you larger, prettier flowers and juicier, tastier vegetables. There are two main pests that your garden will benefit from the most. Those are ladybugs and lace wings.

Ladybugs are useful to the garden because they eat spider mites, mealy bugs, scale, and aphids, which will lessen the amount of damage done to your crop. Very lucky gardeners will have ladybugs make the garden their permanent home and the bug will start to produce larvae. When larvae are spotted in the garden, they look like tiny alligators with orange and black spotted backs. The adolescent larvae are very hungry creatures and will consume approximately four hundred aphids before it grows into an adult. As an adult, the ladybug will eat thousands of aphids and other pests.

If you’re not lucky enough to attract ladybugs to your garden naturally, you can buy them from nursery stores or from special gardening centers. The mistake that people often make once they have bought the ladybugs is to simply purchase them and then toss them in the garden. This will result in the ladybugs simply flying away if the garden hasn’t been properly prepared for them and isn’t a good environment for the ladybugs. To prepare your garden for the bugs, be careful not to use any pesticides for three to four weeks prior to releasing the ladybugs. If you have a persistent problem with pests and need to find a way to control them, use a mild soap to get rid of them. Other times, a good dosing of just plain water may also do the trick. When you are ready to release them, water your garden thoroughly in the early evening and then release them. Ladybugs love the cool and moist environment and can probably be persuaded to stay at least the night if you release them at the right time. In the morning, as all the pests are waking up, the ladybugs will most likely stick around long enough to get a good breakfast before flying away, if they choose to do so. If you want them to stay even longer, you can place organic insect food in your garden.

Another tip to keeping ladybugs in your garden for longer is to only place a few ladybugs at a time into your garden. Take out only a few ladybugs and place the rest in a container that will receive plenty of air and place them in the fridge. A plastic container with holes punched on top will work perfectly for this. Make sure to tell anybody that lives with you that you have ladybugs in the fridge so that they don’t open the container and watch all the ladybugs fly away.