Your garden appreciates the approach of beneficial insects. You know why? They help balance the ecosystem. These insects can control pests in your plants, improve the quality of the garden soil, and attract more pollinators. They can do multiple tasks at a time, then enable you to save a lot of money. If you prefer natural gardening methods, you must know the way to invite these beneficial insects to your garden. That it is.
We’ve round up 12 beneficial insects that your garden love and happy to share them with you. It requires little to no effort to attract them to your garden. They will work with both beginning and experienced gardeners. Who do not love harvesting plenty with our garden and making the plants grow healthily? Just with patience, you can get the help of the good insects coming your garden. Let’s check them out!
#1 Ladybugs
Ladybugs come first in this category. They’re harmless, colorful and oh-so-adorable. These insects are staunch defenders of the garden. They can fight off the nasty critters that destroy your plants. Do you know that a ladybug itself is able to eat over fifty aphids every day? This adds up to about five thousand in their lifetime. Not just that, ladybugs have an appetite for mites, mealy worms, leafhoppers, and mites.
To attract ladybugs to your garden, you can plant dill, fennel, cilantro and yarrow.
#2 Tachinid Flies
Tachinid flies make their name for their strange hatching habits. A tachinid fly will insert its larvae into a destructive bug, such as a Japanese beetle, gypsy moth, cabbage looper, sawfly, or tent caterpillar, to name just a few. This live host will serve as an incubator for the larvae and when it is ready to hatch, it will eat the bug from the inside out, killing it as it emerges. Plus, these bugs help pollinate your garden.
You can grow dill, parsley, clover, and other green herbs to attract tachinid flies to your garden.
#3 Aphid Midges
These bugs are are one of the most beneficial insects to your garden. They can help combat an aphid invasion. To attract them to your garden, you should grow dill.
#4 Braconid Wasps
Braconid wasps are also good garden visitors. These bugs attach their larvae to the tomato hornworm, a serious plague for tomato growers everywhere. The larvae begin to grow and feed on the hornworm as they mature. Braconid wasps propagate extremely rapidly as well.
Grow nectar plants with small flowers and dill, parsley, and wild carrots to attract these flying insects to your garden.
#5 Praying Mantis
Praying mantis is actually a wonderful creature to have around your yard and garden. These flying insects can help you get rid of caterpillars, moths, beetles, crickets, and more. Grow tall grass, shrubs, dill, and marigolds to attract praying mantis.
#6 Ground Beetles
It’s great to invite ground beetles to come to your garden. These harmless bugs love snacking on slugs, snails, cutworms, cabbage maggots, caterpillars and other bugs that spend time crawling on the ground.
To attract ground beetles, you can start a compost pile (if you don’t have one already) and plant lots of perennials. They will place their larvae into the ground at the end of the warm season and as they hatch, they clear the soil of bad bugs before emerging in the spring.
#7 Bees
Bees are essential for the pollination of any garden. Perennials, colorful annuals, and lots of fruits and veggies are appealing to bees. Just grow them in your garden to attract these beneficial insects.
#8 Damsel Bugs
Damsel bugs can help your garden. They love eating harmful creatures such as mites, aphids, cabbage worms, and caterpillars. To attract them to your garden, you should grow spearmint, fennel, and caraway.
#9 Minute Pirate Bugs
If your garden faces a serious pest problem or is overrun with bad bugs, just ask the minute pirate bugs for help. They will pretty much eat any bugs they come across, particularly thrips, spider mites, and aphids.
To attract them to your garden, you can build a decomposing leaf pile in a corner of your garden.
#10 Mealybug Destroyer
As the name may suggest, these bugs are effective in dealing with mealybugs. Mealybugs look like small pieces of fluff on your plants and can leach the sap out of the stalks, causing harm and taking nutrients away from the fruit of the plant.
To attract these mealybug destroyers to your garden, you should plant dill, goldenrod, sunflowers, and fennel.
#11 Green Lacewings
Lacewings are not only harmless but also beautiful. It’s great to have them around your backyard. They love eating a number of nasty pests in their larvae stage including aphids, whiteflies, leafhoppers, and mealybugs.
Coriander, angelica, or dill are appealing to green lacewings. Just grow it around your garden to attract them.
#12 Spined Soldier Bugs
Spined soldier bugs are natural predators of caterpillars, beetle larvae and love to eat Colorado Potato Beetles and Mexican Bean Beetles, specifically.
Colorful perennial flowers are appealing to these bugs and will return to them season after season. Scatter perennials among your vegetables to lure them to the area.
