I Was Spoilt as a Child Gardener - My Mother Understood Bugs

CONFESSION 3 I was late in making the connection between good bugs and organic practices. I thought being organic just meant using different pesticides—ones based on natural ingredients. I certainly didn’t think it meant actually encouraging the presence of insects in the garden. Eventually, of course, I learned the importance of beneficial insects, and a few years later I came to the realization that it isn’t just the beneficial insects that are desirable but also the pests, for without the latter the beneficial species cannot survive.

Walliser, Jessica (2014-02-26). Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden: A Natural Approach to Pest Control (Kindle Locations 85-89). Timber Press. Kindle Edition. 

The author confessed that she earned a degree in botany, taught to meet every bug foe with an arsenal of insecticides. One of her clients taught her otherwise.

My mother was an expert in insects and often kept moth cocoons in the refrigerator so she could let them hatch for photographs. She often hushed negative talk about bugs by repeating that most were beneficial and took care of the destructive ones. If we were out on a picnic she often captured something interesting to show us.

I discovered a wealth of organic gardening books at the Midland Public Library, so my mother laughed about how she was composting when I was wee lad - more interested in doughnuts than daffodils.

Attracting Beneficial Bugs is a good companion to Gardening for the Birds. The two volumes show how the Lord of Creation has designed our natural world to sustain itself, especially when some common sense is applied to what we have have.

Bugs come into our homes because they are attracted to shelter and food. Like plants, bugs will thrive according to the climate. The plants we grow will be appealing to a wide range of birds and bugs, who need those plants for shelter and food. QED (therefore it is demonstrated) - bugs are food and will attract predators to keep them in line.

Birds are the Air Force, while beneficial bugs are the Infantry in this never-ending battle. "But," some will say, "bugs can fly too." Yes - but they are still the Infantry, using Close Air Support. The combination is lethal.

As the author pointed out - and I experienced - a large invasion of destructive bugs will attract a counter-attack by ladybugs or other beneficials. Some of them can be introduced, such as the preying mantis - through hanging egg cocoons in bushes. Yes, the babies will climb out and devour each other, but the survivors will turn on the destructive insects soon enough and establish hearth and home soon enough, if conditions are right.

Here is the normal tragedy in three acts:

1. Plant a group of roses, which attract a variety of insects that thrive on roses, from June bugs to aphids to thrips.
2. Soak the bushes in a systemic poison that kills every insect and spider in the garden.
3. Continue the soaking because no beneficials can live in this Hiroshima of Horticulture, and no bird can feed there.

I have left the roses alone all summer (one brief exception) and found almost no insect damage. The little white Knockouts have had some damage but that went away. The rest of the sixteen rose bushes have produced and thrived in their bed of newspapers and wood mulch.

Later I will write about parasitizing insects, our best friends in the garden. They lay their legs on destructive insects, and their babies eat their way out of their nursery, leaving the host unwilling and unable to harm another plant.

Form follows function in the architecture of the garden.
The preying mantids feast on destructive insects, created for the part they play.
Do you really want to spray this cute little devil?