know your bugs of soil and their habits-- EARWIGS--They’re not particularly discriminating eaters and consume a wide variety of materials both living and dead, acting in part as recyclers. They eat insects and mites, are voracious feeders of aphids and insect eggs, but may also gobble up beneficial insects. Growing shoots of plants, soft fruits, sweet corn, along with zinnias, marigolds and dahlias flowers are some of their favored meals. The damage they cause can mimic that of caterpillars - on older plant leaves including fruit trees, they produce numerous irregular holes or chewed leaf margins. Seedlings may be missing all or parts of their leaves and stem. LADY BEETLES-- are best known as predators of aphids, scale insects and spider mites...A single lady beetle may eat as many as 5,000 aphids in its lifetime. Ladybugs are voracious predators of harmful garden pests, mainly aphids, but they will also eat other small, soft-bodied insect larvae, insect eggs, and mites.Beneficial garden ladybugs for controlling pests in your garden are the most popular and widely used beneficial insects for commercial and home use. LEAF CUTTING BEE--he leaf cutter bee is another useful friend to gardeners as it provides a valuable and efficient pollination service for plants. But they are also a friend to farmers. In fact, Research Service says that 1 alfalfa leaf cutter bee can do the job of 20 honey bees...Have you ever noticed neat little segments cut away from roses, lilac or other shrubs? If it’s leaf cutter bees, there will be a crescent or almost circular shaped hole in the leaf. If you should find this, do not worry, usually it will not harm your plants, although rarely, you could see a fair amount of damage, but this is not the norm. Plants can usually can shake off a little damage. Honey bees, like bumblebees, collect pollen in their pollen baskets or ‘corbicula’ on the hind legs, then transport it back to the hive or nest. Leaf cutter bees do not have pollen baskets on their hind legs. Instead, they collect pollen on the underside of their abdomens, and when foraging, this is quite visible on the bee. RHINOCEROS BEETLE-- Hercules beetle larvae are very beneficial for the compost. They help break down organic matter in the compost. The beetles can break down compost in no time at all. They prefer leaves, and rotting wood, and they like it like it moist. Hercules Beetles are said to prefer rotting wood from wild cherry, black locust, oak, pine and willow. I find them in my compost piles that have large amounts of leaves more than anything else.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 09:57:00 +0000
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