Tips on Attracting Beneficial Insects into the Garden

As might you know, not all bugs / insects are bad. In fact, there are many insects that are beneficial to the garden as they can help in pollinating crops, decomposing plant material, and devouring pests which are harmful to your garden. You may use pesticides as the last option since pesticides can hurt all pests including beneficial insects as well as plants. Becoming familiar with the insects that often visit your garden is the best defense when fighting harmful bugs. You may incorporate beneficial insects and a variety of useful plants that repel pests.

With above reasons, it is good idea to keep the beneficial insects in the garden. You may get the beneficial insects at garden supply store but also you can attract them to come into your garden. So in this article I will share some tips on attracting beneficial bugs into garden in order to get rid of pests / bad bugs.

How to Attract the Beneficial Bugs into the Garden?

There are 4 ways to attract the beneficial insects into your garden as follow:

1. Attracting the beneficial bugs into the garden by growing their favorite flowering plants such as mint, daisy (Shasta and ox-eye), wild carrot, marigold, clover and cosmos. I think this is the best way to attract the beneficial insects into garden.

2. Attracting the beneficial bugs into the garden by offering them a ‘bug bath’. Bug bath is somewhat like a birdbath. Just make shallow container is filled with gravel or stones and just enough water to keep it moist. Insects are prone to drowning, so you can add some larger stones to the dish to serve as suitable resting sites. With this way, they will be able to drink the water without becoming immersed in it.

3. Attracting the beneficial bugs into the garden by not using any harmful pesticides. If necessary you may use organic homemade pesticide.

4. Attracting the beneficial bugs into the garden by mulching. Mulching the plant with hay or dry grass will attract the spider. However you may hate the spider but this spider will catch numerous pesky insects. Besides that, mulch can be used as a deterrent for bad bugs. Mulching with heavy straw deters numerous types of beetles and as might you know, most beetles are harmful.

Beneficial Insects for the Garden
There are so many beneficial insects for the garden. Not only bees and butterflies as pollinating insects but many other bugs can be helpful also. Below are other beneficial insects / ‘good bugs’ should also be encouraged to your garden in order to get rid of bad bugs:

1. Parasitic Wasps

Parasitic wasps as beneficial insects that lay their eggs in the bodies of numerous pests, feeding off of pests and eventually killing them. Some of their victims include: tomato hornworms, aphids, beet armyworms, cabbageworms. You can attract parasitic wasps into the garden with plants such as wild carrot, dill, white clover, and yarrow.

2. Millipedes & Centipedes

As beneficial insects, millipede helps break down organic matter while centipede wipes put all sorts of soil-dwelling pests such as slugs.

3. Ladybugs

These beneficial insects are feeding on aphids, soft-bodied insects, as well as their eggs. You may plant flowering weeds and herbs such as dandelions, yarrow, dill, wild carrot and angelica to attract ladybugs into the garden. 

Lady Bugs in action :-)

4. Pirate Bugs

As beneficial insects, pirate bugs attack many bad insects and are especially fond of spider mites, shrips, and small caterpillars. You may plant some yarrow, daisies, goldenrod, and alfalfa to attract pirate bugs into the garden.

5. Assassin Bugs

These beneficial insects are a natural part of the garden. They help suppress harmful bug populations by feeding on flies, mosquitoes, caterpillars and harmful beetles.

6. Aphid Midges

These beneficial insects devour the harmful pests such as aphids. Aphids is a common nuisance in the garden and very destructive to plants. Aphids not only suck out the sap but spread disease as well.

7. Hover Fly

This beneficial insect is more powerful in its larvae stage since it can devour around 400 aphids. Just plant some flowering weeds, such as yarrow and wild carrot between your garden crops to attract this helpful insect.

8. Praying Mantids

This beneficial insect will feed on virtually any type of bug including aphids, crickets, beetles, caterpillars, and leafhoppers.

9. Lacewings

As beneficial insect, Green lacewing larvae feed on aphids and other pests such as mealybugs, scale bugs, moth eggs, mites, small caterpillars. You may provide water sources and flowering weeds to attract this beneficial insects into the garden.

10. Ground Beetles

Most beetles are harmful to plants in the garden except the ground beetles. These beneficial insects feed on caterpillars, cutworms, slugs, snails and other soil-dwelling insects. You may incorporating white clover into the garden to attract this beneficial insect.

11. Pill bugs / Sow bugs

These beneficial insects feed on decaying organic matter. But if overpopulation of these insects occur, it can pose a threat within the garden. But don’t worry, if this happens, you may plant marigolds to take care of the problem.

photo credit: flickr.com