How to attract good bugs to your garden
Early spring is a time of hope, optimism and figuring out what to plant in your vegetable garden. As you decide what kind of tomatoes, peppers and herbs you want to grow, you may want to consider planting some flowers with those vegetables.
Flowers add color and visual interest to vegetable gardens. Try planting purple alyssum with Japanese eggplants. Marigolds and nasturtiums look great with bell or chile peppers. Purple basil with tomatoes and white alyssum next to dark cooking greens can really bring life to your otherwise plain vegetable garden. In this case, it can literally bring life to your space.
Combining vegetables, flowers and flowering herbs can attract many types of beneficial insects (“good bugs”) to your garden. These garden helpers can pollinate, eat or parasitize pest insects and break down organic matter. All they need are food, water and shelter. They also need you to not kill them.
Many helpful insects are so tiny that you may not even notice their presence. Parasitic wasps are so tiny that they can easily deposit their eggs onto an aphid. The egg hatches and the wasp larvae tunnel into the host insect’s body. Once inside, the larvae consume the host from the inside, then emerge from the unfortunate insect’s hollowed-out body. I strongly suspect that the “Alien” movies were based on this phenomenon.
You can attract these tiny henchmen to your garden by planting nectar-producing flowers that consist of multiple tiny individual blossoms, such as alyssum, dill, carrots, parsley and verbena. These insects feed on nectar but they can’t drink it out of larger flowers. (Think of trying to drink out of a 55-gallon drum).
Predator insects, such as lacewings, ladybugs, assassin bugs and praying mantids, devour many pest insects, mites and insect eggs. The juvenile forms of these predators are voracious but can look quite different from the familiar adult form, so you should become familiar with their lifecycle stages so you don’t inadvertently kill them. The University of California ANR website has a guide on recognizing beneficial insects at bit.ly/3uEIxR6.
Native plants can provide food and shelter for many of these predators. California lilac (Ceanothus), tansy, California poppies, salvia, toyon and native grasses are welladapted to our climate and will attract native beneficial insects.
Water can be made available to these bugs by placing some stones into a birdbath or other shallow basin and filling it halfway with fresh water. The stones allow insects to land and have a drink without falling into the water and drowning. Change the water frequently so you don’t end up with a mosquito problem.
Using as little pesticide as possible is not only better for the environment, it can save you a lot of work by not killing off these useful insects. Indiscriminate use of pesticides will kill off good and bad bugs immediately, but only the bad bugs will return.