Fight Damaging Insects With Beneficial Insects
 (Read 50+ times)
By Agnes Farside
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The New Year is fast approaching, which means the spring seed catalogues will be arriving soon, just in time to give gardeners their winter gardening fix. If you are like me, when you receive your catalogues (there is always more than one), you quickly make a hot cup of herbal tea, snuggle down in your favorite easy chair, and scour each page while the winter wind whips around outside. I always have a paper and pencil handy, jotting down what I want to order, envisioning my garden in full bloom. My tentative catalog list if full of marked off items, check marks, numbers, and doodles. Alongside my list are rough sketches of my garden with labeled rows of what I want to plant where. If you are like me, you will do this several times over the winter months, until you have your catalog list to your liking. Besides the seeds and possible plants you may order, add a few friendly insects to your list. Instead of buying harmful insecticides or having to mess with fixing your own homemade concoctions, try combating damaging insects with natures help using friendly bugs, letting them do your dirty work.
Many companies sell beneficial insects in the form or eggs, larvae, or as live adults. However, which insects are beneficial and which are destructive?
Ladybugs, one of the more attractive, beneficial insects can kill up to 5000 aphids in their lifetime. They can be stored up to ten weeks in a refrigerator with a temperature no higher than 40 degrees Fahrenheit. If you have tried ladybugs before but they tend to fly away, keep them in your garden by first spraying them with a combination of soda pop and water. It acts as glue on the wings, does not harm the bug, and only last about a week.
Another great beneficial insect is the praying mantis, which eats any insect it can catch. The eggs can be stored in the refrigerator until warm weather arrives. Place the eggs in your garden and anywhere from two to eight weeks, 100 to 200 praying mantises will hatch from each egg.
Green lacewing, sold in egg or larvae form, thrives on a diet of aphids, thrips, white flies, and mealybugs. The eggs can be refrigerated (not frozen), for a short time before being released for hatching. Spread approximately 10,000 to 50,000 eggs, or 1,000 to 5,000 larvae per acre, depending on infestation, and repeat every three to four weeks of needed for control.
Using insects to fight insects is a great way to help the environment through the practice of organic/natural gardening.
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Author Bio Box: Agnes Farside
 Please check out my other articles at: http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/110407/agnes_farside.html
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