There are a lot of insects in the garden that are not harmful. They are actually beneficial and the two that we are going to talk about now are lacewings and ladybirds. Two of my favorites. Let me talk about the gardener’s friend. We do not just need people to give your cuttings or maybe you can have some spare plants. We are talking about natures friends. We are talking about those choice insects in nature that really do help you in the garden.
And the three friends that you all look for in my garden from the start of the year. That is ladybirds, lacewings and hoverfly. If you can attract those, encourage those into the garden early in the spring, a lot of your problem sorted the green fly.
So, lady birds, first of all. Again, to the egg box, there are so many uses for eggs and an egg box. And here, we are going to use for a little natures winter residence for the ladybird. So its this part you want, the bit with the holes in. You put that under a garden and shove them to the hedge, somewhere dry and over the winter time, ladybird will soon find that safe haven from predators and cocoon themselves up and that is where they are staying until the spring.
If you might not have been familiar with a lacewing until you saw it in the bathroom. You left the window open and the lights on and you got those lovely lime green almost transparent winged insects. But do not hurt them, because they are amazing eaters. Like the ladybirds, eaters of green fly. To make a lacewing happy during the winter time, it needs a log cabin and that is what I have made for it here. This is a bundle of cut-off pieces of bamboo are poked wide to clear the middle and that is where they like to crawl inside and be safe during the winter.
And again, anywhere in the garden, you can poke bunch of things by really doing yourself a favor against the efforts. Finally, probably for my mind, one of the nicest insects in the garden, you see hobbling around you in the summer, is the hover fly. Do not mistake it for a wasp. They are not related.
Do not hurt the hover flies. You know what they are because you see them. They live their life for the lift shaft, they hover from level, and you will see them moving around. The wings beating so fast, you cannot even see them. Then looking, first of all, assume that they feed and have their lunch. So yellow flowers, orange flowers that are flat, almost single flat heads like helicopter landing pads for the hover flies that is what they are looking for first of all.
And when they have the feel of nectar, then they want to maybe lay there eggs. And the one place that they lay their eggs are the only place that a hover fly will lay its eggs is in the colony of green fly. What better insects to clear the green fly from your roses than the hover fly. So using these three methods of attracting this three beneficial insects. The green fly troubles again to be a thing in the past.
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