A healthy, organic garden positively teems with inset life. With so much attention focused on eliminating or controlling bad bugs, it's easy to overlook the good guys Less than 10 percent of the insects we come across in our yards do damage. Chances are, any bug you don't actur ally know to be a pest is beneficial or benign. Beneficial insects feed on aphids, cutworms, and other garden pes they also process organic waste and pollinate crops.
About 80 percent of plants, including melon, cucu bers, pumpkins, squash, and most fruit trees and berno are completely dependent on pollination in order to reproduce. Insects such as bees, butterflies, and moths-as well as hummingbirds and even bats-transfer pollen from one flower to another in the course of collecting or feeding on nectar (the nutrient-dense and sugary substance secreted by plants). In this evolutionary and symbiotic process, pollinators receive nutrition as they distribute grains of sticky pollen from the male part (anther) of one flower to the female part (pistil) of another flower.
It's all very sexy in a fourth grade biology kind of way.
Many beneficial insects are too tiny to see or masquerade as their less-welcome counterparts. Rather than sorting the good and the bad—let's face it, they're all ugly-try cultivating an informed tolerance and strive to maintain a healthy environment. If you really want to dig deeper into the fascinating insect world, get a bug book with good photographs and keep your eyes open. There's even an app for that: search iTunes with keywords such as "bugs" and "insects."
A healthy beneficial insect population is like a microscopic residential army quietly fighting the war on bad bugs while we gardeners sit back and pull in a bountiful harvest. Here are some tips to keep your garden buzzing with pollinators:
Don't go spray crazy. The most important aspect of altivating a pollinator-friendly environment is keeping the garden as free of pesticides as possible. Most controls, organic and otherwise, wipe out the good insects along with the bad. So think before you spray and always start with the least toxic option.
Plant smart. Mix plantings with sequential bloom periods throughout the growing season to ensure a constant supply of nectar and pollen (necessary food for pollinators and good bugs when they're not eating bad bugs). Also know that many little flowers are preferable to a single large flower which can actually drown a tiny insect in nectar. Include plants which bloom in umbels and daisy-like flowers such as fennel, angelica, dill, cori-ander, chamomile, cone flower, and yarrow.
Just say NO to imported ladybugs. Nurseries do a brisk trade selling cartons of live ladybugs each spring.
Granted, they are cute, voracious aphid-eaters in the garden, but their environmental pedigree is questionable.
To be effective, ladybugs must stick around long enough to actually feed, lay eggs, and produce larvae. These larvae, which look like little red and black alligators, are the heavy lifters in the aphid-control department. Most ladybugs released in the garden quickly fly away to do their good somewhere other than in the yard of the gardener who purchased them. Instead, try planting a row of sunflowers to attract beneficials now that's cute.
Companion planting
Depending on who you ask, companion planting is either Nature's brilliant means of self-defense or yet another case of horticulture hooey. Any endeavor that's been practiced for as long as gardening is going to have its fair share of folklore and tradition. Native Americans combined plantings of beans, squash, and corn them the "three sisters." Beans planted alongside com e the stalks for support while their roots improve the sl Planted at the base of the corn, squash plants consere. moisture by shading the soil while their prickly leas and stems discourage pests from attacking the com tol beans. The science behind nitrogen-fixing root nodus and living mulches may not have been explicitly dis-cussed, but it doesn't matter: they practiced the trade because it worked.
Do some plants play more nicely with their neighbes while other pairings prove contentious? You be the ju In my experience, the carrots don't lie. For years my carrot crop was nothing but a disgusting mess filled wit tunneling carrot rust fly maggots. Today I plant a rox o onions alongside my carrots and their roots are maggo-free. Pairing plants that contain pest-repellent properis and/or attract pest-eating bugs and pollinators may sen complicated on the surface, but it is actually an elegan example of the many underlying, balanced, and natur systems at work in the garden.
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