What are Beneficial Insects and Why are they a Gardeners Best Friend

The cannibalistic praying mantis would just as soon devour a young wingless praying mantis, aphid-eating ladybug or green lacewings as well as all the bad bugs.

Praying Mantids or Praying Mantis if you prefer, is a large stick like beneficial insect that measures from two and one half inch to four inches long.  Green or brown in color to match its surroundings, praying mantis have a set of large eyes located on both sides of its triangular shaped head. Adults have papery wings, where the immature insects resemble adults but are smaller and wingless.

Well-camouflaged predatory slow moving insects, the pray mantis have long front legs adapted for grabbing, and holding their prey. They are quite honestly, cannibalistic feeders, other praying mantis and other good bugs are welcome meals to this veracious feeder, it is that whole survival of the fittest thing.

Praying mantis survives cold winters as eggs deposited in a paper like egg case. This makes it easy for organic vegetable gardeners to purchase the egg sacks that contain hundreds of eggs, from an online store such as amazon.com, or local garden center. Then put the praying mantis egg case in the garden, and let nature take its course.

Ladybugs, Lady beetles, or Ladybird beetles whatever you choose to call them. These well-known beneficial insects are not scary looking like the praying mantis and other predatory insects.  Actually, ladybugs are somewhat cute. They come in a varitity of colors, reddish, orange, or black with spots, depending on species.

The Ladybugs larvae is elongated, one quarter of an inch to one half inch in length, covered with tiny spines, and are grey or black with blue and orange markings. Adult ladybugs are attracted to plant blossoms and blooms full of pollen and nectar. Both adults and larvae help to control aphids, thrips, mealy bugs, scale insects, mites, and whiteflies in our organic flower and vegetable gardens.

Adult green lacewings are also good bugs as an organic method of pest control in the vegetable garden, pale green or brown in color, measuring from one half inch to three quarters of an inch in length. Lacewings have slender bodies with, large transparent highly veined wings they hold over their body when they are resting. Green Lacewings lay eggs with stalks. Their Larvae is yellowish-grey, mottled, spiny, and have long curved thin pincher like jaws. In the Larvae stage, Green Lacewings also called, antlions, or aphid lions, hunt and eat aphids, mealy bugs, mites, scale insects, whiteflies, thrips, and insect eggs.

While we are talking about using good insects to control the bad bugs organically, many vegetable gardeners have great success using companion planting. This provides the beneficial insects with all the incentive to stay around our garden, thereby keeping the annoying insect pests under control.

Beneficial insects are constantly on the prowl hunting for prey. Flowers attract these beneficial insects to your garden, give them welcomed nourishment, and entice them to stay around searching your organic garden for plant eating insects. Planting the right kind of flowers, at the best possible times, of the growing season will increase the likelihood that beneficial insects will call your vegetable garden home and lay eggs on your vegetable plants. There by their eggs will hatch, and their young will most likely call your garden plants home, feed on all the harmful pest insects such as aphids, caterpillars, leaf beetle larva, trips, spider mites and whiteflies which I believe you agree, is a very good thing indeed.

Useful plants for supporting good vegetable garden insects generally have small blooms and flowers with easily accessed nectar and pollen. Umbels, such as  or cilantro when young and tender, Bouquet variety of dill, fennel and caraway are very attractive plants to many good garden insects. Alyssum, flowering buckwheat, black-eyed Susan, dwarf sunflowers and yarrow look great in our vegetable gardens, and are extremely attractive to many of the helpful garden bugs.

Organic gardeners should only need to plant five, to ten percent, of their vegetable garden in these types of annual flowers in order to attract the beneficial insects. The annual flowering plants do not necessarily need planting all in one space to attract good garden bugs. Rather consider planting some annuals in odd corners and out of the way spaces in the garden that separate, let us say, pepper, tomato, eggplant, zucchini and cucumber plants.

Plant annual flower seeds three to four weeks apart, this will attract and support beneficial insects through the entire growing season, this trick will keep some plants flowering all the time, and ensure the beneficial insect colonization process continues in our garden. You see most annuals flower every six to eight weeks, this makes it a good idea to plant a few seeds every three or four weeks to ensure flowers are always in bloom.

● Spring, alyssum, buckwheat

● Early summer, coriander, dill, yarrow, buckwheat

● Mid-summer, coriander, fennel, dill, caraway, black-eyed Susan, yarrow, dwarf sunflowers

● Late summer, coriander, dill, black-eyed Susan, dwarf sunflowers

● Fall, alyssum, buckwheat, dwarf sunflowers

 Beneficial Nematodes are microscopic insects, that seek out and destroy several hundred kinds of soil dwelling, wood boring, undesirable insects in our organic vegetable gardens, such as flea larvae, white grubs, cutworms, corn rootworms, strawberry weevils, gypsy moth larvae, cabbage root maggots, fungus gnat larvae, armyworms, weevils, grubs. Just to name a few we organic gardeners find bothersome.

These beneficial bugs are safe for us humans, our pets, and the environment. Beneficial Nematodes are compatible with other beneficial garden insects such as ladybugs, lacewings, and praying Mantids, and do not harm earthworms. Shipped live in a box, available for purchase on line from your favorite online store like amazon.com, or purchased locally from your favorite garden supply store.

Simply mix them directly into your organic vegetable garden soil, by simply applying them mixed in a water solution in your clean insecticide free garden sprayer, mixed directly into the soil, planting mix or organic mulch, and feel good about this organic garden insect pest control method.

The most important thing we gardeners should remember, regardless the pest control method we prefer to use, the organic approach, or harsh chemical insecticides. Not all beneficial insects are predators specializing in insect pest control for our vegetable gardens. Many help with cross-pollination of our flowering fruit and vegetable plants. Take honey Bees and butterflies for instance, these little beauties land on one blossom, collect the pollen, when they are finished feeding and collecting pollen they move to the next flowering plant. Where in turn depositing some of the pollen from the first plant, pollinates the second plant so it will produce higher quality fruits, veggies, and beautiful sweet smelling flowers in our gardens.

Keep in mind, before we rely on beneficial insects such as, bees and butterflies to pollinate our garden vegetables, we first must attract them. There are specific plants best used to attract these beneficial pollinators.

Queen Anne’s lace,

Butterfly weeds,

Flowering herbs,

Marigolds,

Dandelions,

As well as many other flowering plants with sweet smelling blossoms are great choices. When we use these varieties of flowering plants in our gardens, we increase the likelihood of not only beneficial pollinating insects but ladybugs as well will be calling our organic garden home, and help us with controlling the destructive insects wanting to make a meal of our delicious fresh fruits and veggies.

When it comes to our organic vegetable gardens, after fertilizers, and watering, our biggest concern I believe you will agree is, insect pest control. After all, as organic gardeners we need to be mindful of controlling all the bad bugs in our gardens that left unchecked will devastate our fruits and veggies. However, we certainly do not want to harm the beneficial insects that help pollinate all our vegetable plants in the process.

Using companion planting that will both attract and keep all the good bugs happy in our gardens. Makes controlling the destructive bugs organicallyly that are hell bent on eating our vegetable and flower garden plantseasier, and let us not forget, better for the environment.

Happy gardening, Mike