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Pests & Pollination: Attract Beneficial Insects

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Last week we discussed strategies for conquering weeds in an organic garden. This week we’re moving on to another chore loathed by natural farmers, gardeners, and growers everywhere, controlling pests. One excellent way to ensure pest populations don’t get out of control is to ensure you have plenty of beneficial insects. When we think of beneficial insects, we often think of pollinators like bees and butterflies, but insects have so much more to offer us, gardeners! Many beneficial insects prey on pests and their eggs and larvae. Learn how to attract beneficial insects to your garden.

A lacewing on a leaf (attract beneficial insects)
Lacewing (Chrysopidae spp.)

What are Beneficial Insects?

Beneficial insects help us in the garden by pollinating plants, feeding on pests, and parasitizing pests. In our area, some of these include:

  • Wheel Bug (Arilus cristatus)
  • Wolf Spider (Lycosidae spp.)
  • Rusty Patched BumbleBee (Bombus affinis)
  • Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes)
  • Carolina Mantis (Stagmomantis Carolina)
  • Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia)
  • Orange Sulfur (Colias eurytheme)
  • Braconid Wasp (Cotesia congregates)
  • Damsel Bugs (Nabidae spp.)
  • 梅布尔Orchard Orbweaver Spider (Leucauge argyrobapta)
  • Southeastern Blueberry Bee (Habropoda laboriosa)
  • Lacewing (Chrysopidae spp.)
  • Big-Eyed Bug (Geocoris spp.)
  • Blue Orchard Mason Bee (Osmia lignaria)
  • Striped Lynx Spider (Oxyopes salticus)
  • American Copper Butterfly (Lycaena phlaeas Americana)

These are just a fraction of the insect species hard at work in our yards and gardens! Of course, there are beneficial animals too. Birds and bats can also help keep pest populations down and pollinate plants.

Further Reading:

dead leaves (attract beneficial insects)
Dead leaves are excellent habitat for many beneficial insects.

Habitat Features to Attract Beneficial Insects

All these helpful insects need a habitat that provides the essentials of food, water, and shelter, just like we do.

Don’t Clean Up Too Much

Many beneficial insects need places for themselves or their eggs to overwinter. Blue Orchard Mason Bees, for example, overwinter their eggs in cavities in plants like the hollow stems of flowers or reeds. Depending on the species, Lacewings over winter in their adult or pupa stage in piles of dead leaves or other organic debris. Resisting the urge to keep your garden spotless can provide these insects with better habitat.

Plant a Windbreak

有时候,园丁会种植防风必威精装版官网app林的帮助with wind-related issues like lodging corn, but few people probably consider that it makes life much easier for beneficial insects. A windbreak or hedgerow can help slow wind through your garden, creating calmer flying conditions for bees, dragonflies, lady beetles, and other flyers.

Provide Water

Especially in the hot dry days of summer, insects need water just like people do. If you have water on your property like a pond or creek you can help keep it full and cool by allowing the banks to grow in trees and shrubs that will shade it. If you don’t have a natural water source, don’t worry you can make an insect waterer! All you need is some sort of clean small trough and stones to place in it. The stones are critical, as insects need an easy way to get down to the water and to climb out. Change the water regularly.

Avoid Pesticides of Any Kind

Sometimes when we see the organic label we assume something is safe. Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple. Organic pesticides may be much safer for people and often waterways than conventional pesticides. However, both conventional and organic pesticides kill insects and neither of them differentiate between types of insects. If you have something that kills caterpillars to get rid of the cabbage loopers any swallowtail caterpillar that comes into contact with it will be effected too.

Flowers & Plants that Attract Beneficial Insects

Flowers aren’t just for bees and butterflies! Lacewings, parasitic wasps, lady beetles, and other insects use them too. For example, the larval stage of Convergent Lady Beetles feeds on insects, but the adult stage feeds on nectar, pollen, and honeydew. The females need a certain amount of these foods before laying eggs.

Conversely, many species, including bees and butterflies, need plants that aren’t in their flowering stage. For example, the caterpillars of the Black Swallowtail Butterfly will feed on the leaves of carrots, dill, fennel, and parsley.

Selecting Plants & Flowers

While poppies, roses, tulips, and hydrangeas are all stunning flowers that are great for human enjoyment, they may not be a favorite among beneficial insects. Flowers that are native or user-friendly typically will attract and support more beneficial insects.

Native Plants
Native Shrubs
  • Eastern Sweetshrub (Calycanthus floridus)
  • Southern Highbush Blueberry (Vaccinium formosum)
  • Allegheny Serviceberry (Amelanchier laevis)
  • False Indigo Bush (Amorpha fruticosa)
  • American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana)
Native Trees
  • Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis)
  • Sourwood (Oxydendrum arboreum)
  • Tulip Poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera)
  • Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum)
  • Black Cherry (Prunus serotina)

Your local extension agency may also be able to provide more information on native species specifically suited to your area.

User-Friendly Flowers

Generally, beneficial insects find get the most food from a few different types of flowers: those with flat umbels of tiny flowers (looks a bit like a lace umbrella) like Queen Anne’s Lace, those with daisy-like flowers made up of tiny flowers like sunflowers, and those with loose spikes of tube-like flowers like mint.

These are just a few plants beneficial insects love. While it’s still perfectly fine to have and enjoy other flowers and plants, it’s important to plant some that consider our local insects.

Incorporating these strategies into your garden plan can help you attract beneficial insects and have a successful season. Happy growing!

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10 Plants to Attract Beneficial Insects to Your Garden

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Many insects play vital roles in helping our gardens grow. Flies,bees,butterflies, and moths pollinate crops while spiders, beetles, mantids, parasitoid wasps, lacewings, and otherpredatorsfeed on pests. On the soil level, worms, millipedes, and other decomposers help turn organic matter into usable nutrients for your plants.

Attracting some of these insects to your garden can reduce pest pressure, help build healthy soil, and improve yields. Here are ten plants you can grow this season to help attract some of these important insects to your garden:

Buckwheat

Buckwheat

This tasty grain and fantastic green manure crop is also excellent for attracting pollinators and parasitoid wasps. It grows quickly, and both wasps and bees love the flowers! Sowing a patch and have it buzzing with activity when flowers appear in as little as six weeks!

Dara

Dara

This delicate flower is closely related to Queen Anne’s Lace but isn’t as aggressive in the garden. The flower clusters in pink, dark purple, and white attract various pollinators, including tachinid flies that parasitize squash bugs.

Creeping Thyme

Creeping Thyme

Slow-growing at first, Creeping Thyme will eventually form dense mats. This thick ground cover provides excellent shelter and shade for predatory beetles as well as decomposers like millipedes.

Bronze Fennel

Fennel

Fennel has beautiful delicate flowers that attract tiny wasps and other pollinators. Its leaves are also a food source for some swallowtail butterfly caterpillars.

Mint

Mint

Like thyme, mint is a great way to create dense shady areas of foliage that are multi-purpose. You can harvest mint for tea and culinary uses while it provides habitat for decomposers and predatory beetles. The flowers are a favorite with bees.

We’re currently out of stock of mint seed, but you may be able to get a start from a friend. Alternatively, other plants in the mint family that work well includelemon balmoranise-hyssop.

Sweet Alyssum

Sweet Alyssum

Sweet Alyssum forms low, spreading mounds with fragrant, tiny white flowers that are excellent for attracting bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. It’s long-blooming, especially when spent blooms are cut back. It also provides shade and shelter for ground-dwelling beneficial insects.

Echinacea

Echinacea

This native flower can help you attract a variety of butterflies and bees to your garden. It’s also drought-tolerant and medicinal.

Dill

Dill

Like fennel and Dara, dill’s tiny flowers are attractive to many small beneficial insects, including parasitoid wasps, flies, and bees. It will do double-duty when it’s time to make pickles!

Rudbeckia

Rudbeckia

Sometimes known as Black-eyed Susan, it has composite flowers which will attract bees, hoverflies, parasitoid wasps, and robber flies. It’s also a great low-maintenance planting for an untended space. Rudbeckia self-sows and naturalizes aggressively.

Betway必威西汉姆联

Betway必威西汉姆联

These are the workhorse of any flower garden. Zinnias are easy to grow and will bloom all summer, especially if you keep up with deadheading. They’re excellent for attracting bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.

Bonus: Welcome-to-the-Garden Pollinator Collection

Support pollinators all season withthis special collectionof 13 old-fashioned single-blossomed heirloom, open-pollinated flowers and herbs. It includes calendula, echinacea, cosmos, sweet alyssum, bachelor’s button, cleome, sunflowers, rudbeckia, beebalm, phlox, and zinnia.

We give 30% of your purchase of this mix to the Piedmont Environmental Council for their “Buy Fresh Buy Local” Food Guide.

Additional Tips

  • Avoid using pesticides. Even organic pesticides can negatively impact beneficial insects the same way that they’re intended to harm pests. Opt forintegrated pest managementinstead.
  • Let things get a little messy and provide natural, wild habitat whenever possible. Let part of your lawn grown, leave standing dead plant material, don’t get rid of autumn leaves, and let trees and shrubby areas grow.
  • Build an insect hotel! You can find instructionshere.
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5 Butterflies Found in the Mid-Atlantic & What to Plant for Them

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By now many have heard about and understand the plight of the Monarch butterfly. Over the last few decades, their numbers have been steadily declining as they face food and habitat loss as well as pesticide exposure. Though they’re certainly a deserving and beloved species (plant milkweed!), Monarchs aren’t the only insect or even butterfly that’s struggling. Here are five slightly lesser known butterflies found in the Mid-Atlantic and what you can plant this year to help them.

Photograph of an American Copper from Mass Audubon

American CopperLycaena phlaeas americana

The American Copper’s is a fairly common butterfly though anecdotally it is seen less frequently today than in the past. These butterflies are orange and grey with black spots.

American Copper caterpillars preferred larval host plant (the plant where a butterfly lays eggs and is eaten by caterpillars) is Sheep Sorrel though it will use curly dock. Leaving sheep sorrel and curly dock available is important for their survival. As adults American Copper butterflies will feed on a wide variety of available flowers.

Photograph of a Black Swallowtail from Mass Audubon

Black SwallowtailPapilio polyxenes

Commonly mistaken for other swallowtails this mostly black butterfly can be distinguished from other species by the black center on the orange spot on the inside corner of their hindwing.

If you love the black swallowtail you may have to be willing to share a few of your crops. Black Swallowtail caterpillars will feed oncarrots,dill,fennel, andparsley. As adults black swallowtails will feed on a variety of flowers. Like many other butterflies, they are particularly attracted to species such as milkweed, thistle, and clovers.

Photograph of a Common Sootywing from Mass Audubon

Common SootywingPholisora catullus

This butterfly can be identified by its glossy black (sometimes dark brown) appearance and the double rows of white dots prominent on the outer margins of the upper forewings.

The Sootywing’s favorite host plants are lambsquarters,amaranth, andcockscomb (celosia). Adding some of these to your garden or in the case of lambs quarters simply letting them grow can help this butterfly thrive in your yard. Adult Common Sootywings can be found feeding on dogbane, common milkweed, purple loosestrife, and wild indigo.

Photograph of a Long-tailed Skipper from Mass Audubon

Long-tailed SkipperUrbanus proteus

The Long-tailed Skipper gets its name from the long tails on its hindwings. It can also be identified by its iridescent blue-green head, thorax, and basal areas of both wings.

This species of caterpillars feed on legumes, including cultivated varieties. Legumes include all sorts ofbeansandpeas,紫花苜蓿、三叶草、紫藤。许多这样的species also happen to be really easy to grow. In their butterfly stage, they will feed on a variety of flowers.

Photograph of an Orange Sulfur from Mass Audubon

OrangeSulfurColias eurytheme

The Orange Sulfur can be identified by yellow-orange to darker orange upper wing surfaces.

Like the Long-tailed Skipper, Orange Sulfur Caterpillars feed on legumes. However, Orange Sulfurs have a strong preference for alfalfa earning them their nickname the alfalfa butterfly. As adults, they aren’t selective about which type of flowers they feed on.

Additional Tips

A few great flowers for many butterflies include:

The most important consideration with flowers is providing blooms throughout the season. Plant successions and choose flowers with a variety of bloom times from early to late. Choosing native plant varieties can also help butterflies succeed.Check out ourWelcome-to-the-Garden Pollinator Collection.

Avoid the use of pesticides whenever possible. Even certified organic pesticides can affect more than the targeted species. Especially if you live in a dry area consider adding a water feature for butterflies and other pollinators to drink from.

These are just a small fraction of the Mid-Atlantic’s native butterflies. If you’d like to help butterflies and other pollinators consider some of these tips as your planning and working in your garden this season.