5 Beneficial Garden Insects – How it Helps your Garden?
Which insects are the most beneficial? We’re talking about bugs that are beneficial to garden plants and devour pests that would otherwise eat plants in the garden. Find out which plants and flowers attract helpful insects and start thinking about it!
Everyone knows what bees and butterflies are, but what are the other beneficial garden insects? You’ve probably already seen these lovely men in your garden, but you weren’t formally introduced to them. Here is a handful you should familiarise yourself with:
- Ladybugs
- Tachinid Flies
- Earthworms
- Bees
- Ground Beetles
5 Beneficial Garden Insects – How it Helps your Garden?
Ladybugs
Ladybirds are polka-dotted little beauties that range in size from 1 to 10mm and are members of the Coccinellidae family. Ladybirds eat on pests as larvae and adults, helping to keep them under control. Ladybugs can help you use fewer insecticides in your garden. They may eat between 50 and 60 aphids every day.
Aphids are little sap-sucking insects that can cause damage to garden plants. Ladybugs also consume soft-bodied, plant-eating insects such as mites, scales, thrips, and whiteflies. Ladybugs come in a variety of colours, including orange, red, black, yellow, and brown, and have varying amounts of dots on their wing coverings.
Tachinid flies
It’s no surprise that Tachinid flies are mistaken for pesky houseflies; they’re nearly identical except they have thick bristles on their abdomen. Adult Tachinid flies are about 1/2″ long and dark or grey in colour. This family of parasitic fly species is one of the most important in the order Diptera, with 1500 members. Immature beetles, butterflies, moths, sawflies, earwigs, grasshoppers, and true palmetto bugs are their host prey.
Seedlings of small-flowered herbs like thyme, dill, cilantro, parsley, and fennel will bring Tachinid flies to the yard. Flowers like phlox, aster, daisy, and Queen Anne’s Lace are popular in bringing Tachinid flies to the garden.
Earthworms
Earthworms assist promote air and water circulation in the soil by acting as nature’s small ploughs. Earthworms create vermicast (excreta) after eating organic materials such as leaves and grass, which work as an “organic fertiliser” rich in humus, NKP (potassium nitrate), micronutrients, and soil bacteria. Earthworm castings aid in the rebuilding of topsoil. It’s no surprise that earthworms are known as “nature’s first gardener.”
Bees
Bees are the stinging insects required for vegetable gardening. Bees pollinate crops such as melons, pumpkins, and other squashes, apples and other tree fruit, and many others. Pollinators are responsible for one out of every three bites of our food, including fruits, vegetables, chocolate, coffee, nuts, and spices. You’d have to hand-pollinate if there weren’t enough of these beneficial insects buzzing around your garden.
Beetles
If you notice a giant black ground beetle, your first instinct might be to squash it—but don’t! In your garden, they make excellent mates. With over 2,500 different varieties of ground and carpet beetles ranging in size from 1/8 to 1-1/2 inches long, you’re bound to find some in your garden. They’re great at controlling night-time pests because they’re nocturnal insects(digging into mulch and other organic debris during the day).
The ground beetle hunts more than fifty different pests, including slugs, snails, and cutworms. Some even eat the seeds of weeds. These will look great in your garden!