Beneficial Insects for Organic Gardens

Table of Contents:

The Importance of Beneficial Bugs
Common Beneficial Insects and Their Strengths
Attracting Beneficials to Your Garden
Introducing Beneficial Insects Into Your Garden
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Things to Be Aware Of
Final Thoughts...

For organic gardeners, beneficial insects are a critical aspect of your garden pest control and ecosystem balance.

So what are beneficial insects anyway?

Here we'll dive into the wonderful world of beneficials such as predatory insects.

Let's look at the important roles these creatures play in organic gardens, their use cases, and how to attract them...

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ladybugs released in garden from sachet beneficial predator organic — Ladybugs are one of the most well-known beneficial predators
which an organic garden can benefit from.

Beneficial predators make the best garden allies and do more to combat pests than you could ever hope to yourself. Embracing them opens up an entire new perspective on pest management.

If that sounds interesting to you, keep reading.

We'll go over common pitfalls, some of the most important beneficial bugs, and their places in your garden.

The Importance of Beneficial Bugs

Beneficial insects provide the predatory pressure which keeps pest populations in check.

They are a balancing force in your organic garden which make sure that things don't get out of hand.

It's very difficult for an organic outdoor garden to thrive without a healthy population of beneficials.

From predation to pollination to parasitization, beneficial insects have numerous ways to help balance pest populations.

If you can entice them into your garden (or introduce them, carefully) you can avoid the need for toxic synthetic pesticides. That junk can easily poison beneficials, waterways, invertebrates, as well as you. Beneficial insects are the solution to avoiding pesticides and finding natural balance in your organic garden.

All praise unto the predator bugs, they're absolute fam!

Common Beneficial Insects and Their Strengths

While there are too many beneficial insects to name out there, and you'll want to do your own research about your local species - let's talk about a few of the most-common ones.

Many of these have broad ranges, or else are commonly purchased and introduced into gardens to help with pests or pollination. Each with their own unique set of strengths and applications.

The most common example that many people are familiar with is that ladybugs are known for devouring aphids. They also eat some mites and various other insects.

Likewise, lacewings do a great job at managing caterpillars, whiteflies, and mealybugs.

Praying mantises are a super popular predator for their ability to eat just about any bug that crosses their paths.

Some of my personal favorite garden predators are parasitic wasps, hoverflies, and ground beetles.

Shout-out to bees, worms, and black soldier flies! We can't forget that some of the hardest-working gardeners out there are the bugs.

Attracting Beneficials to Your Garden

The very best way to get beneficial insects into your garden is to entice them in.

By offering food, habitat, shelter, and water, you can attract all the beneficial bugs you'll ever need into your organic garden.

While there are a lot of techniques details that this topic delves into, the key piece of info to remember is: Plant native flowering species!

After you've planted as many native flowering species as you can, move onto the non-native plants which do the best job of attracting beneficials. These include the following (in no particular order):

Just be sure that nothing you plant in your garden is an invasive species in your region.

This is a short list, there are many more flowering species which will help attract beneficial insects to your garden.

The goal is to always have something in bloom, to provide pollen and nectar as supplemental food for good bugs so they stick around and reproduce even when pest species are scarce.

Planting as many flowering species as you can, and allowing your food crops to go to flower will help provide full coverage throughout the entire growing season.

If you'd like to learn more about attracting bennies to your garden, jump in here.

Introducing Beneficial Insects Into Your Garden

If you're going to be introducing beneficial critters to your garden, it's important to do so carefully.

Remember that ecosystems are complex, and there can be unanticipated consequences to introducing non-native species. See this article on Regenerative Gardening And Systems Thinking to learn more about unintended consequences in complex systems.

It's crucial that you do your research before introducing random predator insect species into your local ecosystem. Just because you can purchase numerous non-native species of beneficial bug online doesn't necessarily mean you should. Really think through your actions and how they may affect your local ecology here if you do decide that introducing beneficials is right for you.

Avoid pesticides and other synthetic chemicals which can harm beneficials if you are going to introduce them.

Be sure that you provide the conditions needed for predators to survive. Consider temperature, humidity, cover, shelter, water, supplemental nutrients, etc. when introducing beneficials.

Some beneficials can be purchased at your local garden center or online, while others can be found among your local nature and brought into your garden.

I've had great experiences with Nature's Good Guys. I'm not sponsored by them, but find the ability to buy very small amounts of beneficials with quick shipping to be super convenient. Lots of other sites seemed to want me to buy WAY more bugs than I could ever need.

Just make sure you put "Do not include ladybugs" in your order comment if you don't want ladybugs, otherwise you might get some added to your order for free!

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

While beneficials are of critical important to organic garden ecosystems, there are some common pitfalls you should be aware of.

The biggest problem with the introduction of any species to an ecosystem is the potential for them to be invasive. Take this pitfall seriously, as you do not want to accidentally introduce a species that takes over your local environment and throws off the balance of the natural ecology.

Another common mistake is simply introducing the wrong bug for the job. Be sure to research and match your predators to your pest populations if you want effective control.

Releasing too many beneficials at once can also cause problems in the form of ecosystem imbalance.

Things to Be Aware Of

When introducing beneficial insects to your garden, it's essential to be aware of their needs and behavior.

Some insects like ladybugs will stay in your garden only if there is enough food and shelter available. I've found that providing flowers can help give them a secondary food source when prey populations dwindle. My local ladybugs seem to really dig buckwheat flowers as food, but your mileage may vary.

Praying mantis might also move on once they've slayed all of the available prey.

It's important to remember that beneficials are living creatures and just like each of us they require a healthy environment in order to thrive. This means consciously avoiding the use of chemicals and pesticides that can harm them and their food sources!

Consider shrubs or hedgerows around your garden, which make a great chill spot for beneficials of all kinds. Hedges give beneficials a retreat from the prey-infesting fields of battle (your garden lol jk... sorta)