Pretty plants for good bugs
Get your garden buzzing with flower power, writes Colleen Simpson.
Although not a perfect fix for the permanent problem of pests in the garden, a good population of beneficial insects will reduce damage and improve the overall health of your backyard environment.
And growing the sorts of plants that will bring the good guys in doesn’t have to be a penance either, many of them offer shamelessly showy flowers too.
Here are seven that are pretty and popular (with beneficial bugs at least).
1. Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum)
This plant is the king of beneficial insect enticers. Its delicate wee flowers offer a feast and a half of protein-rich pollen and dankly fragrant nectar of the kind hoverflies and their ilk seem to love.
It’s a quick turnaround crop too, flowering within six to eight weeks from seed tossed carelessly over the soil.
The seed is edible but you’d need to grow a lot to get a decent food crop.
2. Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus)
Who can resist smiling at the sight of a sunflower? But they deliver more than just good cheer.
Passionvine hoppers like sunflowers more than any other plant – more even than actual passionvines which means you can use them as a sacrificial crop and plant them to attract the suckers off your desirable plants.
Sunflowers keep delivering long after their looks have faded too, with great heads of fatty seeds that make excellent chook feed. Grow them between rows of veges and the only maintenance required is a bit of leaf pruning to keep the sun shining on the crops below.