Home & Garden Publications

New ways to attract good bugs

Sunset, Spring-Summer, 1998 by Jim McCausland

One way to attract good bugs to your garden - and possibly reduce the amount of chemical spraying needed - is to set out plants whose nectar or pollen provides beneficial insects with a good food source. Especially attractive to beneficial insects are plants of the Umbelliferae family, including carrots, celery, coriander, dill, fennel, and parsley.

Or you can spread or spray a sugar-protein combination on or around infested plants. This treatment not only attracts beneficials but also keeps them in the garden longer to breed and feed on pests. These alternative insect food sources - with names such as Pred Feed - are becoming increasingly available in nurseries and mail-order catalogs.

Another new attractant is called Ladybug Lure. It includes a chemical that simulates the scent of aphids, attracting ladybird beetles and several other types of beneficial insects that feed on aphids and other pests.

If you can't find these products in a nursery, write to Peaceful Valley Farm Supply, Box 2209, Grass Valley, CA 95945, or call (916) 272-4769.

MEET THE FORGOTTEN POLLINATORS

With honeybees declining throughout North America, which creatures will do their job? Stephen Buchmann at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson says, "Within 100 miles of here, you can find more than 1,000 kinds of pollinating birds, bats, and insects, including a huge variety of leafcutter, mason, carpenter, cactus, and digger bees." These are the forgotten pollinators: essential creatures whose work often goes unnoticed.

To see them at work and learn how to attract them to your garden, visit the museum's Pollination Gardens. The yucca garden, butterfly garden, and hummingbird garden-aviary are open during regular hours. The new nocturnal garden, open Saturday evenings, is where hawkmoths do their work; see them after mid-June. The museum (2021 N. Kinney Rd.; 520/883-2702) is open 7:30 to 6 daily, until 10 P.M. Saturdays June through October. Admission costs $8.95.

Even if you aren't able to visit the museum, you can follow Buchmann's advice to attract pollinators to your own garden.

* Install bee nests.

* Stop using all pesticides, especially acephate, carbaryl, diazinon, malathion, and synthetic pyrethroids.

* Plant part of your landscape with native wildflowers, shrubs, and trees that bloom throughout the year.

* Make a puddle that insects can visit to draw water and salt. Overhead watering or row irrigation normally provides this; if you have drip irrigation, aim one emitter or spray head at open ground.

* Read The Forgotten Pollinators, by Stephen Buchmann and Victoria Shoemaker (Island Press, Washington, D.C., 1997; $16.95 paperback; 800/828-1302), a fascinating series of essays covering the state of pollinators worldwide.

* Visit the forgotten pollinators' Web site at www.desert.net/museum/fp.>