As a new gardener, it can be difficult to know which insects are good and which are bad for your plants. This summer I found out the hard ways, that my garden had become overrun with bad bugs. Hornworms and aphids were the worst.
When you find harmful insects in your garden, the best way to deter them is to invite a few good insects into the garden. These beneficial insects will eat harmful insects. Here are a few good bugs you should invite into your yard.
1. Ladybugs will eat aphids, mealy worms, leafhoppers, and mites without harming your plants.
How to Attract Them: You can attract ladybugs by planting dill and fennel.
2. Praying mantis do to there size will eat the larger bugs, such as caterpillars, moths, beetles, and crickets to name a few.
How to Attract Them: You can attract the praying mantis by growing shrubs, dill, and marigolds.
3. Ground Beetles get all the bugs that are on the ground. And because they are nocturnal they work at night. Some of the bad bugs they will help you get rid of include slugs, snails, cutworms, cabbage maggots, and caterpillars.
How to Attract Them: By planting perennials you give them a place to lay their larvae in the ground during the late summer and the babies hunt for food in the ground first, then come out in spring. They also like to munch in a compost pile.
4. Hoverfly prey on aphids, scale insects, and caterpillars.
How to Attract Them: You’ll need to grow common yarrow, fern-leaf yarrow, dill, or basket of gold to attract this type of fly to your garden.
5. Garter Snakes while not a bug, I had to add them to the list because they also eat bad bugs from the garden and control crickets, grasshoppers, and other insects. They will also keep the mice population down.
How to Attract Them: Attract them by having some tall grass, bushes, or piles of woods or rocks.