Should You Order Beneficial Insects for Your Garden?
May 4, 2009 – 7:12 pm
One of the reasons we start our home vegetable gardens is so we know we’ve got healthy organic food that hasn’t had anything funky done to it. We don’t want to spray chemicals or pesticides on our growing veggies, so we rely on natural forms of garden pest control.
Beneficial insects are often mentioned as ways of controlling the population of unwanted bugs. And there are quite a few stores willing to sell you pounds of lacewings and ladybugs and such. But will buying beneficial insects this way actually help? Is it worth the money?
Maaaaybe.
Ordering a pile of insects and dumping them in your garden in the hopes they’ll eat the detrimental insects may not work if you haven’t taken other steps.
First off, one of the best ways to keep pest insects from destroying your garden is to choose a method that doesn’t have you growing big blocks or rows of all the same crop (making it easy for those squash borers to find your squash, for example). Square Foot Gardening
Companion planting is another way to either attract beneficial insects naturally or hurt the pest bugs. Radishes are said to keep squash borers away from squash and pumpkins. Scented marigolds can drive away bad nematodes. Nasturtiums repel wooly aphids, white flies, squash bug, cucumber beetles and other pests of the cucurbit family while attracting many predator insects (marigolds can also useful in keeping pest insects out of your backyard fruit tree orchards).
Lastly, having healthy soil goes a long ways toward staving off pest insects, since vigorous plants that grow faster are better at withstanding pest damage. Make sure you’re doing everything you can for your growing medium before you even plant in the spring.
Dumping a bunch of emergency beneficial insects in the garden may help with short term problems, but much as with our own health, it’s best to treat the whole body, rather than simply trying to squelch individual symptoms.
Tags: gardening, insects, pest control