Bugs for Life!
Pests.
Who needs pests? For households, they are quite the pesky guests that ruin the aesthetic appeal of our interiors, not to mention the health hazards they pose. For gardens, it’s the same ol’ story magnified ten times worse. They ruin our crops even before they could bear flowers or fruits. They spoil whatever lavish designs we have planned for our landscape. They shred the leaves of our plants and curtail the growth of our young sprouts. They compete with the nutrients we have reserved for our seedlings. Indeed, gardening life would be so much better without these pests.
This is the reason why a lot of veteran and novice gardeners have resorted to a variety of insecticides to get rid of these unwanted pests. Even for them, not all chemical solutions are effective. Some even cause immeasurable damage to our crops. There should be a better way to free our gardens from the perils brought by these pests.
Thankfully, when it comes to the problem of pests, we could always fight fire with fire. There are a slew of beneficial bugs that we could place in the ecosystem of our gardens. These beneficial bugs, being on top of the food chain hierarchy, do eat most of the harmful pests that make our gardens their breeding grounds. Let’s take a look at some of the more popular varieties of these beneficial bugs.
* The praying mantis. One of the most effective biological pest control methods known to gardeners and farmers alike; the praying mantis is a slender insect armed with rather sharp front legs designed to capture small pests. Praying mantises are quite easy to breed. You don’t have to go out of your way to propagate them, as they would naturally deposit their eggs on the leaves of your plants.
* Lovely ladybugs. Consider these ladybugs as the janitors of your garden. Though they would have a hard time preying on flying pests, they do feast on tiny, soft bodied insects as well as the eggs and larvae of most harmful pests. Ladybugs are the most common of the 370 species of bugs in North America, so procuring some for your garden won’t pose any problems.
* Green lacewings. Lacewings look like a cross between bugs and flies. They are characterized by light green exterior and glossy golden eyes. Most of the time, they feed on nectar, honeydew and pollen; things that don’t take away to the good health of your crops. Their carnivorous streak is what makes lacewings shine as natural biological pest controls, however. They voraciously feed on mealybugs, red spider mites, thrips and a variety of harmful insects. They also eat the eggs and larvae of their favorite meals.
* Ground beetles. These are probably most familiar to many gardeners as those large, long-legged bugs that usually have blue-black or brown exteriors. They hide beneath logs and rocks most of the time, and they feed on slugs, snails, cutworms, and root maggots that more often than not feast on the leaves of our sprouts. For this reason, ground beetles are essential partners in your pest control campaign.
* Parasitic wasps. Though they’re not necessarily bugs, parasitic wasps remain as one of the most effective natural pest control methods there is. They are quite aggressive, as they attack the actual nests and eggs of many harmful pests. No need to wait for them to appear. They destroy the very source of your garden’s enemies.
There are more beneficial bugs, and insects, of course, and a mastery of the advantages they can provide will greatly aid you in ridding your garden of the destructive pests that threaten to ruin everything that is have worked for.
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