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Attracting Beneficial Insects

© Deborah Turton

Beneficial insects eat or parasitize the insects that eat your carefully tended garden plants. With a healthy population of beneficial insects, you may not have to do anything to control many common garden pests. Nature has already developed some great insect controls in the form of beneficial insects, and as an organic gardener you can take advantage of these insects.

The first step is to identify which pests are in your garden. Below is a list of garden pests and which beneficial insects prey or parasitize each pest.

Aphids - Ladybugs, tiger beetles, damsel bugs, lacewings

Cabbage Worm (Offspring of cabbage moths, the white moths you see flitting around your garden) - Ichneumonid wasps

Corn Earworm - Pirate bugs, big eyed bugs, flower bugs, ground beetles, hover flies, trichogramma wasps

Colorado Potato Beetles - Stink bugs, ground beetles, ladybugs, tachinid flies

Cucumber Beetles - Tachinid flies, stink bugs, spined soldier beetles

Cutworm - Ground beetles, tachinid flies

European Corn Borer - Ichneumonid wasps, hover flies, flower bugs

Flea Beetles - Braconid wasps

Grasshoppers - Robber flies

Mexican Bean Beetles - Spined soldier beetles, lacewings, big eyed bugs, assassin bugs

Mites - Predatory mites, lacewings, aphid midges

Scale - Ladybugs, chalcid wasps, lacewings

Spider mites - Spider mite destroyer

Thrips - Lacewings, damsel bugs

Whiteflies - Chalcid wasps, ladybugs

How to Attract Beneficial Insects

So now you've gone out to the garden and identified the major pests. Or if you're in the Northern hemisphere, you've checked your garden journal (what, you don't have a garden journal -I'll get to that later) to see which pests were bothering your plants. Now you need to add plants to your garden to attract the appropriate beneficial insects. Here's a list of beneficial insects and which plants you can use to attract them.

Aphid midges - Dill, mustard, sweet clover, herbs

Big eyed Bugs - Potatoes, clover, green beans,

Damsel Bugs - Clover, alfalfa,

Flies (Hover, Robber and Tachinid) - Anthemis, sunny red cosmos, zinnia, tansy, buckwheat, Queen Anne's lace, yarrow , sweet alyssum, caraway, dill, coreopsis, parsley, ivies

Flower Bugs (Minute Pirate Bugs) - Alfalfa, corn, daisies, yarrow, stinging nettles, clover, sweet alyssum, goldenrod, teasel

Ground Beetles - Leave areas weedy including goldenrod and wild amaranth

Lacewings - Angelica, corn, sunflowers, flowering weeds, tansy, caraway, white sensation cosmos, sweet alyssum, dandelion, goldenrod.

Ladybugs - Tansy, angelica, scented geraniums, dill, dandelion, yarrow, wild carrot

Pirate Bugs - Alfalfa, daisies, yarrow, stinging nettles, clover,

Predacious Thrips - Nectar producing plants such as rosemary, thyme, lemon balm, hyssop

Predatory Mites - Nectar producing plants such as rosemary, thyme, lemon balm, hyssop