beneficials

Plants to Attract and Provide a Suitable Habitat for Beneficial Insects, Birds and Butterflie

by Nancy Garrison, 1999

Slowly but surely I’m becoming aware and interested in what I can do in my own garden to attract and provide sustenance for beneficial insects for the purpose of creating a more biologically diverse habitat and more ecologically managing “pests” that might otherwise ruin my plants. There are number of excellent references on this subject which I’ll list at the end of this article, since in this article I am only focusing on some key plants you can grow to make the greatest impact on typical “pest “populations.

My strategy is to plant a beneficial plant at each ends of each of my 4X8’ vegetable beds so that there is a ready supply of pollen and nectar for as much of the year as possible. Since the insects that tend to be a problem in the Willow Glen area include aphids, scale, whiteflies, thrips, mites and a number of caterpillars, I’m growing plants that attract beneficials that prey on or parasitize these pests.

by Sue Van Stee and Joan Youngren

Overview:

Because this garden is an ongoing project maintained from year to year, the primary purpose continues to be choosing, planting and maintaining flowering plants that attract and sustain populations of beneficial arthropods and vertebrates including birds and lizards. We also try to determine the plant preferences of these various organisms. We share this information with other Master Gardeners and the gardening public.

by: Allen Buchinski

In my previous article, I discussed "what are nematodes" with a focus on plant parasitic types. Here we'll focus on the beneficial kind.

As you surely remember, nematodes are tiny round worms that proliferate in nature. Of all nematodes, only a portion cause problems in your garden, these types live on or in plant tissue, disrupting the plant's natural processes. There are many other nematodes that feed on other things, including organic matter in the soil, bacteria, insects, even animals. It's the insect eating variety that's of interest to us here, harnessing them to help us with insect pests in the garden.

How Do They Work?

Since nematodes live in the soil, they can be used against insects that spend at least part of their lifecycle underground, typically the larvae form (although researchers are also exploring the methods for applying nematodes above ground as well by timing the release in such a way that they can enter a host insect before succumbing to the elements.) There are two strategies used by nematodes for finding prey, depending on the species: