Attracting “good bugs” to our yard is a primary design consideration in both our home permaculture gardens, and at our market gardens. Having permanent Beneifical Insect Populations and Sustainable Soil Fertility are the two main reasons I designed the, as yet untested, Sustainable Market Garden. But I am not an entimologist, so how do I know what bugs I am attracting?
Luckily there are resources out there like ATTRA to help a brother out. They put up a PDF from the Oregon State University, which is a high quality “pocket guide” to benificial insects. I took the liberty of posting it here:
Pocket Guide for Beneficial Insects
Very high quality photos help you identify the buggers, and put a name to them -and if the guide is short on text it will at least allow you to have a solid idea of what is in your gardens, which will allow you to go back an ddo more research.
Speaking of research, this field is WIDE open -start tracking where you find soldier beetles and hover flies and get it on the web. We all need to learn from each other
-Rob
Filed under: Gardening, Market Garden, Permaculture, sustainable agriculture | Tagged: Sustainable Ag
Many of these predators need nectar at some point in their life cycle- usually in their adult stage, when they are flying around laying eggs.
I find that the small wasps prefer smaller flowers that bees bypass. They seem to love the flowers of bok choy, cilantro and carrots- another good reason to produce your own seed at home!
Thanks so much for the link to the brochure! It really helps to have photos, a description can be so vague when so many insects look kind of alike.