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The Benefits of Bad BugsCan aphids be good for your garden? Skip gives you the buzz on bugs. |
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Transcript: The Benefits of Bad Bugs
Hey, I’ve got a gardening newsflash for you: Bugs are good. Now, I know you’ve heard of beneficial insects, but I’m not talking about just beneficials, I’m talking about pests. Yes, a few pests can be a good thing.This is one of my favorite plants. This is Tropical Milkweed, also called Mexican Milkweed, and it absolutely loads up with these little yellow aphids. They don’t do the plant a whole lot of harm, but they do attract every good beneficial you can imagine into the garden to feed on them. You’ll find lady beetles and lady beetle larva, lace wings, beneficial wasps that lay an egg inside the aphid causing that yellow aphid to turn brown, and then the wasp crawls out. It’s really cool. There are also assassin bugs and other beneficial bugs.
When you raise a good crop of beneficials on a plant like this, they fly around your landscape and garden to help out on other plants. So actually harboring a pest like this on a particular plant can be a good thing. So you don’t want to do a lot of spraying on these kinds of plants. When you come out and examine them, you’ll find the beneficials are very busy and helpful for your landscape.
So plan on including a plant like Tropical Milkweed, or another good example is gaura. They attract some aphids in, but they really become a great nursery for raising beneficials in your landscape.
With your commonsense tip on attracting beneficials to your landscape, I’m Skip Richter.
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Last Updated:
July 6, 2006