Insects in your garden

Believe it or not you can use insects to control pests in your garden! So get rid of those poisons and make your garden totally kid friendly!
This will be one of the hardest concepts for a person new to gardening to get used to: insects are not your enemies; they are your friends. For starters, butterflies are insects; who wouldn't want more of those in their garden? Also, roughly half of the birds (including warblers and even hummingbirds) eat insects, not seeds; if you want to attract them, you'll need to have something for them to eat.

Does this mean you have to sacrifice your plants? No. Well over 90% of all insects do no harm whatsoever to your plants. Indeed, many of these insects turn around and eat the other insects that are truly harmful!

Stop poisoning - now. It may take a couple of years to re-establish the ecological balance, but after you do, you'll probably have fewer insect problems than before, as ladybugs, lacewings, and other allies wipe out bothersome aphids and the such that attack your prize plants. You can jumpstart the process by adding these beneficial insects to your garden.

Once you do this, you may be amazed to find you start studying and enjoying the cool insects in your garden along with the flowers and wildlife. Not all spiders are those ugly black things that surprise you in your bathroom; many are quite colorful and interesting - such as the crab spider, which adapts to the color of the plant it is on. My daughter adores looking for bugs in the yard. We even have a bug magnifying glass so she can see them better. This is a really fun activity for kids of all ages!

We've even come to terms with bees: Don't get between them and the pollen, and everything will be alright! Not to mention there's a wide variety of bees beyond the normal honeybee; the big furry yellow and black bumblebees are our favorite.

Some fun bugs that one can buy at your nursery are:

Praying Mantis - You get a big pod from which hundreds of tiny praying mantis will emerge. This will amaze you little ones. Praying mantis eat most pest insects, mites, eggs, or any insect in reach.

Ladybugs- Who doesn’t love a ladybug? Both larvae and adults feed on soft-bodied insects such as aphids, mealybugs, scale insects and spider mites as well as insect eggs.

Lacewings- With their beautiful gossomer green wings this bugs are so pretty! Lacewing larvae and adults feed voraciously upon aphids and other small insects, insect eggs, and spider mites. They also eat leafhopper nymphs, whiteflies and small caterpillars.

Plants that attract beneficial insects include angelica, bee balm, buckwheat, calendula ,candytuft, ceanothus, chervil, cilantro, clover, daisy, dill, erigeron, evening primrose, fennel, goldenrod, gypsophila, lovage, parsley, Queen Anne's lace, rue, snowberry, sunflower, sweet alyssum, sweet cicely, thyme, valerian, and yarrow.