Want to know how to get ladybugs in your garden? First of all… quit spraying poison on the pests!
People have asked why I don’t do anything about the aphids on my grapes.
“Why not spray them?” is the usual question.
The answer is easy. Aphids breed faster than ladybugs and rapidly hit plague proportions… but… the ladybugs will usually catch up if you don’t spray. After a week or two, you’ll start seeing ladybugs and their larvae everywhere… and a week or two after that… the aphid issues have cleared up.
What most folks do is this: they see the aphids, they reach for poison, they kill the aphids (and the ladybugs that are just emerging)… and the beneficial predators never get a chance to balance things out the natural way. This leads to more problems with aphids in the future, since the population is now under your control, rather than nature’s.
I don’t even spray aphids with garlic water anymore. If they’re really bad, I spray them off with a blast from the hose. Otherwise, I just wait on the ladybugs to do it for me.
It’s not hard to get ladybugs in your garden – they’re out there, waiting for aphids to show up so they can snack on them. But if you make your garden a place of chemical warfare, you’re not going to have much luck keeping any beneficial insects around.
Add Habitat for Ladybugs
Leave weeds around in patches outside your garden. Just an un-mown area is a great habitat for good guys.
Country farms used to leave hedgerows for wildlife long ago, before factory farming pushed right to the edges of the field to garden maximum profits. Perennial beds, food forests, even ornamental hedges – provided, again, they aren’t sprayed with toxins – leave space for ladybugs and their babies.
Buying and releasing ladybugs really isn’t necessary. Just make your garden a friendly place and they’ll arrive and start snacking.
I wish all my garden visitors would eat a few aphids. For more on ladybugs and aphid control, check out this video I posted a little while back:
11 responses to “How to get ladybugs in your garden”
Do you ever purchase ladybugs online? If so, would you mind sharing the website?
Actually, I never have. They always came on their own. I leave plenty of aphids and weed patches around for them. Aphids particularly like new grape growth… and the ladybugs chase them there. I think they have an ability to smell their prey.
I wish the lady bugs would chase the aphids away from the milkweeds… The monarch caterpillars don't seem to mind the aphids… but they (aphids) clutter up the pictures…
Seems we were on the same wavelength… I posted ladybug pics on May 14 as well.
Ladybug pics on the SAME DAY? (cue creepy theremin music) Ha HA!
I've noticed that the ladybugs don't seem to eat the aphids off my tobacco plants. My theory is that the aphids that can feed on toxic plants are unpalatable to ladybugs.
I am the same way. The more projects I take on, the less attention my other projects get. Why would you want to add in a spraying routine to combat pests? I actually started encouraging paper wasps and others to the garden as well. I love watching them scout for food around my garden. They also love to eat aphids. And have helped curb caterpillar infestations. It’s pretty cool to watch them munch on a cabbage looper carcass.
Absolutely with you there. Once I realized how great wasps were at hunting the bad guys, I was sold. This spring I put up some old mailboxes just to give them places to build their nests. Thanks for stopping by.
About wasps, well actually hornets, a cousin. Ppl are scared of hornets, mostly back of cartoons giving them a bad rap, but the truth is they are the best de-buggers for your garden I’ve ever seen, and they are far more peaceful than many kinds of wasps. You don’t mess with them, they don’t mess with you. In fact hornets..I’m talkin white face, or bald face, the famous ones..are more than willing to share space with you given the above, and that their nest is far enough away that you don’t need to approach them constantly. They won’t come after you just for that, but too much near activity makes them nervous and they’ll move away on you.
In the garden they are capable of flying up under, high and low, where the worms are that no others get. They will take dozens per day each, along with the moths and the rest. While You are in there, they simply ignore you and go about they’re business!
They are also much better at catching flying insects than any other getter I’ve seen. This reserves a special place for them with me, because I hate Yellow Jackets, and even tho they are cousins, they are a favored prey. In Oregon I used to make bottle traps and catch a quart of the damn things per day in summers, but once I got hornets they cleaned those suckers right out!
Here’s how I did it:
Not too far away there was a paper nest, about the size of a soccer ball attached to a small tree. First I made a small roof where I wanted them to be..about a hundred feet off my garden, also in the trees. I went at night, and wrapped the nest in a gunny sack, up over, including a foot our so of the limb, tied with a slipknot, and sawed them off. I tied the limb under the roof, and pulled the slipknot off with a long string. The bag fell off nicely, and the very next day my new friends were hard at work in my garden. Because of the roof the paper nest lasted for many years. Interestingly even tho they killed Yellow Jackets I never once caught them molesting my honey bees. No one was ever stung by them, not even visitors, and I highly recommend their usefulness. I believe the key to their good behavior is that they are much more intelligent than other wasps. Literally, they would go inside my outbuildings to catch the insects caught banging against the windows, and go right back out with them, never getting caught themselves.
My vote is 5 Stars for White faced Hornets.
I don’t seem to have a problem with aphids, and I do have plenty of ladybugs, but I cannot seem to get rid of the stinkbugs without pesticide. They are killing my tomato plants. Any ideas?
Yes: http://www.thesurvivalgardener.com/5-ways-to-deal-with-stinkbugs/
Something I have done that seems to work well: when I find a plant that is infected with aphids and has obvious ant farmers… I sprinkle diatomaceous earth around the stem of the plant on the ground. This kills the ants and keeps them from being able to “farm” the aphids.
On Ladybugs:
Habitat is all important!
You can buy ladybugs, there’s ads in magazines etc., but what you will get is adults. Only the newborn are the voracious eaters you want..so that leaves this years garden without even if you do buy some. Worse, those will be 99% gone by next year, Unless you give them a real habitat, the kind they need to breed. This means winter over. Sure, they’ll find some for themselves, but usually the production from that is small. On the other hand, if you create place(s) like some..a Very Few..I’ve seen, you will get ladybugs in the thousands come next spring. So here’s what they really like:
Dry, sheltered, out of the wind, undersides of rocks. There must be a large cavity..that is in diameter, not deep..covered around on all sides with a mix of smaller rocks, gravel and weeds. This leaves access, but keep the holes small and narrow as they are so no lizards or other eaters can use them as Their winter feed. The top rock needs to be exposed to the sun..think tromb wall. Depending on the areas cold, this top rock will be just thick enough to heat in the sun days, and bleed the heat through by convection nights. The colder the thicker.
I’ve been blessed with natural habitat like this, but from that experience here’s how I would build one:
First find a nice solid type of stone. The father north the more important solidity is to the convection. Pick one that’s flat, maybe 6 to10 inches thick, (3 to 5 in the south) and between 2 and 3 feet in diameter.
Make a clean dirt bed that size. Put down enough stones around the edges to support it no more than two or three inches off the dirt. Figure in settling. Cap it, and fill all around tightly with the above mix. After, only, it has settled, carefully open a few small holes for entrance. Very convoluted passage in is better, as that will deter predators, but not the ladybugs. I would stock it purposely during the summer, but that’s optional if you have some around anyway. You can look under this rock if you have large enough foot stones by using a pry bar, but be careful not to lower it, as those few inches are everything to your tenants during their stay.