Inviting beneficial insects to your garden is a great alternative to using chemicals that are not only a he alth hazard but also costly. This is a gentle and reliable way to control garden pests.
Each useful insect is a gardener's little helper. Even children know about many of them (for example, bees). And some useful insects are undeservedly offended, mistaking them for pests. Let's try to fill these gaps by examining in detail this inconspicuous, but numerous people inhabiting vegetable gardens and orchards.
Ladybug
The pot-bellied red beetle with black dots on its back is familiar not only to those who work on the ground. His charismatic appearance inspires even venerable designers. Cartoons are made about this insect and fairy tales are composed. Often it becomes the hero of photo shoots and thematic programs.
And gardeners know for sure: a ladybug is an insect whose role in the garden is difficultoverestimate. Both larvae and adult beetles feed on aphids, destroying huge hordes of these pests in their short life.
In nature, there are about a hundred species of this insect, and they are all predators. In our area, the most common large red ladybug. This insect can reach a length of 9 mm. It feeds on leaf aphids.
Osmium
Fluffy insects that look like bees are completely harmless. They bring great benefits to the garden. Osmia go to collect nectar even in such weather in which an ordinary domestic bee will not take up work. If you want these toilers to live in your garden, get buildings with a thatched roof or simply place a few pieces of wood with drilled holes on the site. They love osmia and elderberry branches without a core. This is just the perfect home for them.
This beneficial insect can live in the most unexpected place: in a hole from an old nail or a door gap.
Bumblebees
Many people mistake them for slackers, but bumblebees are actually very useful insects in the garden. They are well adapted to the harsh northern conditions of life, so they work even where other pollinators are not found.
With long proboscises, they extract nectar even from plants with narrow corollas, inaccessible to other insects.
When collecting nectar, bumblebees carry pollen, and they do it very quickly. Entomologists have calculated that the field bumblebee visits more than 2.5 thousand plants in one flight.
Beetle
In many gardens, the ground beetle is found from April to the end of October. These are predators that feed on eggs, caterpillars, pupae and adults of many garden pests. In a day, one ground beetle can destroy three to five gooseberry moth larvae, up to a dozen sawfly caterpillars, about a hundred gall midge larvae.
Beetle ground beetle hunts at night, and rarely occurs during the day. These insects spend winter in the soil.
Even more voracious than adults, "kids" cause significant damage to populations of many harmful insects. They feed on fly eggs, codling moth worms, and slugs. Many other parasite larvae also get to them for a snack.
Beetles and their growing offspring will gladly settle in sawdust or shavings, fallen leaves. Set up a couple of shelters for them on the site, and soon you will have faithful garden helpers in their face.
Glasshole
Another insect that often falls from gardeners is the lacewing. "Wrecker or protector in front of me?" - the man thinks and, just in case, drives away, or even destroys the poor thing.
But an experienced gardener knows that this light green insect, similar to a dragonfly, is one of the main enemies of aphids. But this handsome man does not harm the garden, does not eat fruits, does not sharpen wood, does not feed on “colleagues at work”. Why is she offended? Most likely, this comes from simple ignorance. Yes, and the appearance of the larva affects - those who are afraid of insects, they allseem to be the same. In fact, it is the larval form that eats most of the aphids. Adult insects often feed not on the pests themselves, but on the sweetish substance they secrete.
Who is this lacewing? Pest? Or is it a defender? Rest assured, this insect will only benefit your garden by eliminating enemy aphid colonies.
Firefighters
These insects are so ubiquitous that, perhaps, each of us has a couple of childhood memories associated with them. Someone calls them firefighters or firefighters, someone calls them soldiers. The kids invent a lot of fables, the hero of which is often this useful insect. And love affairs with ladybugs are attributed to them, and participation in protecting cities from fires, peacekeeping missions … It's good when misconceptions spread in this direction. But often even adults say that this insect is a malicious pest.
But as soon as you find out what fire bugs eat, everything becomes clear. Their diet includes aphids, leaf beetles, fruit caterpillars. If these insects have settled in you, know that the garden is under reliable protection. The garrison of soldiers will reliably protect the trees. But if there are too many of them, they can periodically encroach on your cherries or leaves of berry bushes. Still, the benefit of the population is much greater than some damage in the form of bitten berries.
By the way, if there are cockroaches in the house at the dacha, invite a few red-winged firefighters to visit. They will fix the problem quicklydealing with the intruders. Just do not try to pick them up - these insects can stand up for themselves and bite hard. If this happens, do not worry - their bites are painful, but not poisonous.
Bees
This insect is just basking in the glory. Everyone knows that beneficial insects bees are human helpers. They not only actively participate in the pollination process, but also give many useful products: honey, wax, propolis and much more.
Many combine gardening and beekeeping. Hives can be installed directly in the garden or not far from it. Apple, pear, plum, gooseberry and some other horticultural crops would not be able to bear fruit without the help of bees.
It is difficult to overestimate the merits of this insect. They do most of the work of pollinating plants.
In addition to domestic bees, there are also wild breeds of bees. They settle in shady forests and plantings and also sometimes fly into gardens in search of nectar. It is difficult to domesticate them, and there is no point in this - it is easier to breed domestic ones.
Close relative - spider
Actually, this creature belongs to arachnids, but many gardeners still perceive it as a useful insect. Spiders catch in the web not only annoying flies, but also some garden pests.
Since we are talking about spiders, perhaps we can pay attention to earthworms, which are also not insects, but are strongly associated with them. They loosen and saturate the soil with organic matter.
Ducky Lion
Another tireless aphid exterminator is a relative of the lacewing. The aphid lion and its larvae feed exclusively on aphids, so that its populations do not grow to gigantic sizes. These insects are used not only by summer residents, but also by professional farms. In specialized stores, you can even buy clutches of eggs of this insect, which can later be placed in greenhouses and on open ground.
Trichogramma
This microscopic parasitic insect brings great benefits precisely because of its lifestyle. Trichogramma larvae can only live off other organisms - eggs and larvae of other insects.
It is noteworthy that Trichogramma selects only clutches of pests for parasitism. This beneficial insect is dangerous for more than 90 species of harmful butterflies that feed on leaves and fruits.
Knowing the laws of nature helps to make life much easier and significantly reduce the cost of housekeeping. Try to make friends with little garden helpers, do not drive them off the plot and do not exterminate them, and thanks to them you can get a great harvest without using chemicals.
