all right, Tonya,
let's talk a little bit about beneficial bugs.
But first, what do we mean by beneficial?
- Well, a beneficial bug or beneficial insect
is a bug that helps you reach your goals in the garden.
Some of them are pollinators.
We think of immediately our bees that are good pollinators,
so they're beneficial to us.
And also, we have a lot of bugs
that kill other bugs that we don't like.
So, we have bugs that eat the bugs
that would eat our vegetables.
- Okay, so you wanna start with the braconid wasp?
- Sure, the braconid wasp is very a common thing
to be seen in the garden, but most people don't know
when they've seen evidence of the braconid wasp.
Usually, you'll find these on the tomato hornworms
on your tomato plants.
You'll see all these little white egg sacs
on the back of the caterpillar.
And the braconid wasp, even though it's a wasp,
it will not sting you.
They're very tiny, like an 1/8th of an inch, so very small.
The female lays her eggs on the back of caterpillars,
moths, beetle larva, and some aphids.
And when those eggs hatch, the larva eat the host,
the tomato hornworm or whatever.
And then after they are done eating,
the bad bug dies and the new beneficials
fly away to infect more of your pests.
So, if you see a tomato hornworm
that has all these little white egg sacs
on the back, you don't want to squish it.
You wanna leave it there so that
it can provide food for those good bugs.
You can also attract them in your garden
by growing certain things like dill,
parsley, wild carrot and yarrow.
In general, any kind of little herb with small flowers
that adult wasps like to use for nectar.
- Small flowers, I think that's pretty interesting.
Okay, now let's talk about green lacewing.
- Okay, the green lacewing, the larva are the ones
that feed on the pests.
In this case, they like aphids, mealy bugs,
caterpillars, scales, thrips and whiteflies.
So, a lot of the things that we don't like,
they like to munch on.
The female will lay her eggs on a slender egg stalk,
and she can lay about 200 eggs at a time on these stalks.
And one larva that emerges from that
will eat 200 aphids in a week,
so they're called aphid lions, they're really hungry.
Hungry guys.
- (Chris) In a week.
- In a week, 200 aphids.
And they will feed for two to three weeks before they go
into a cocoon, and then five days later they emerge.
You can plant some things to attract them to your garden
like angelica, coreopsis, cosmos, and sweet alyssum.
And you can also mail order those egg stalks with the eggs.
So yeah, the green lacewing are very beneficial.
You don't wanna spray those with an insecticide.
And in fact, a good rule of thumb is,
when you spray an insecticide,
you oftentimes kill the beneficials
with the ones that you're trying to get rid of.
Yeah, so unless you use Bt, 'cause it's specific
to caterpillars, but if you use a broad spectrum insecticide
you're gonna kill all of your good with your bad.
So, you want to be careful in how you use those.
- Good information to share, Tonya, good information.
How about this next one though, a pirate bug?
Yes, minute pirate bugs.
That's kind of a fun name.
- (Chris) Yeah, it's pretty fun.
- They're very small, 1/12th to a 1/5th of an inch long,
that's where they get the minute from, very small.
And they're black and white in color.
The immature stages are very small,
they're kinda tear-drop shaped
and brown and orangy colored.
The adults and the nymphs will both be predators
for thrips, spider mites, aphids and their eggs.
And an adult will eat 30 spider mites a day.
So, they're quick moving.
They'll attack just about anything though,
not just those particular pests that we like to get rid of.
And the way they attack their prey
is they have a piercing, sucking mouthpart.
So, they'll use that mouthpart to inject into their prey,
and then they will suck the juices out of the prey.
- (Chris) Ew.
- (Tonya) Yuck.
But that's how they do it.
They can go from an egg to adults in three weeks
and they have three generations per season.
And this is another one that you can buy online.
And they're actually a really good predatory bug
if you've got a greenhouse,
and they may be more effective than others.
And if you wanna try to just encourage them
to come to your garden, you can plant goldenrod,
daisies, alfalfa, yarrow, clover and vetch.
- Okay, all right, so how about this next group
of beneficial bugs, spiders?
- Spiders, yes.
- Really, spiders?
- Well, they're not technically an insect.
When we talk about beneficial insects,
they're not technically an insect
'cause they have eight legs instead of six,
so they're an arachnid.
But not all spiders build a web to catch their prey.
In fact, the ones in our garden
that are beneficial, they hunt their prey.
So, we have wolf spiders, jumping spiders
and crab spiders.
And the wolf spiders, I know every gardener has seen.
They live along in the leaf litter, in the mulch,
and whenever you're turning your garden over
or doing any kind of weeding, you'll find them there.
They're kind of the large, brown spiders
with the stripes on their back.
- (Chris) Yeah, large.
- (Tonya) Yes.
- (Chris) Yes, yes, they are.
- The mama spider carries around her eggs
with her where she goes, and after her young emerge,
for two weeks, she'll carry her young on her back.
And they hunt at night in the leaf litter.
Then we have a jumping spider.
The jumping spider, even though they don't use a web,
they'll use a strand of silk to tether themselves
to a leaf, and then they'll jump on and attack their prey.
And then the crab spiders have enlarged front legs,
and that's where they get the name crab spider from.
And they like to hang out on flowers
and hunt for their prey from flower petals.
And they can even turn colors, change colors a little bit
to camouflage against the flowers.
- Oh, how about that?
- Yeah.
- Not fair.
- Pretty cool, yeah, not fair.
(laughing)
They're good hunters.
- Pretty good, all right, so how about the praying mantis?
We've all heard about the praying mantis.
- Well, the praying mantis are really cool looking bugs.
Of course, they get their names from their big front legs
that they use to grab their prey while they munch.
And they can be really good at camouflaging themselves
against twigs, and sticks, and all that kind of stuff.
They like to lay their egg cases
in like this paper mache lookin' thing.
Actually, bought a tree recently and it had one
of these egg cases on it, so that was pretty cool.
- (Chris) That's cool.
- And the egg case will have like up
to 200 baby praying mantis in there.
And you won't even know that they've hatched.
You can't look at the egg case
and tell if they've hatched or not,
you just have to happen to see a baby praying mantis
somewhere, and that's how you know
that you've had it hatched.
So, you can buy them on the internet
and put 'em in a greenhouse or in a garden setting,
but you won't know if they've hatched or not
unless you just so happen to see the babies.
And these take five months to mature.
And they can lay up to five egg cases in their lifetime.
And they like to eat pretty much anything
that will catch their attention.
They're pretty slow-moving.
Yeah, so they'll grab anything,
like another beneficial insect even,
they'll grab like bees and other praying mantis.
So, they're not real particular on what they eat.
- Wow.
I've never seen a baby one, though.
- I haven't either except like on the internet.
You can like look up video of these things hatchin' out
of their egg cases, it's really pretty cool.
- All right, it's pretty good stuff.
So once again, folks, be careful
when you're using pesticides in the garden, right?
Because we do have beneficials out there that will help us.
Right?
- That's right.
- Thank you much for that good information,
Tonya, we appreciate that.
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