Lots of beneficial bugs and birds eat problem insects. Attract the good guys, and you'll reduce problems with the bad ones.
- Aphids: Praying mantises, ladybugs and aphid wolves (the larvae of green lacewings) are natural foes of aphids. Hover flies and wasps kill aphids by injecting their eggs into aphids. Plant Queen Anne’s lace to attract wasps and marigolds to attract hover flies. Birds, especially chickadees and house wrens, consume aphids by the thousands.
- Caterpillars: House wrens, mockingbirds, warblers and catbirds devour harmful moth and butterfly caterpillars and the larvae of numerous other insect species. Install birdhouses in your garden or erect seed tables and plant fruitbearing hedges.
- Codling moths: Woodpeckers pick out eggs of codling moths and many other insects that hide in tree bark. Attract woodpeckers to your yard in the winter by hanging suet and seed feeders in affected trees.
- Cutworms and moth larvae: Trichogramma wasps are beneficial insects that parasitize many moth eggs, including those that hatch into armyworms and cutworms. Release wasp larvae in June when moths are laying eggs, or simply grow plenty of flowers.
- Grubs: Birds are hardworking grub eaters. Till your garden bed at least two days before you plan to sow or plant and let them pick it clean.
- Japanese beetles: Robins, starlings and flickers, equipped with the long, pointed beaks needed for poking into soil, help control Japanese beetles by eating the larvae. Other birds, including cardinals and catbirds, eat the adult beetles. Make sure that fresh water is always available, but empty your bird feeders during Japanese beetle season to keep the birds hungry enough to snack on the beetles and grubs. Also invite birds into the garden by minimizing use of broad-spectrum pesticides.
- Slugs and snails: Blackbirds, ducks, frogs and toads, lizards and snakes, all consider slugs and brown snails a delicacy.
- Whiteflies: Lacewings and ladybugs are good whitefly predators.
Bobherbert /iStockphoto
Praying mantises feed upon aphids in gardens.
