Ladybug Release: Not a good day to be an aphid in my garden
We normally would have already had our annual ladybug release for aphid control, though this year it has been a little colder than normal so we have to postpone until this evening. You want to release your ladybugs at sunset since they do not like to fly at night and gives you the best odds of keeping them in your garden.
For fun and a little carnage we decided to let 20-30 out early and placed them on some plants with a few too many aphids (peas and mint) In the picture above fortunately (or unfortunately depending how much you loathe aphids) you can’t see it but the ladybug was just having his first victim. With many more to come that were surrounding him (or her).
Tags: aphids, ladybugs, little green bugs
Build a ladybug house
Jun 1, 2010 aphids, cheap, kids, ladybugs
With a piece of cedar fence board and a few nails you can make your own ladybug house to give your army of aphid eaters I nice comfortable place to take shelter between battles
This project started with my youngest daughter (5 years old) has been asking every weekend, “Can we build something with wood?” Finally I came up with this project which we had a great time building.
Tags: aphids, little green bugs
Little green bugs on pea plants
May 31, 2010 aphids, ladybugs, organic, peas
It is fairly uncommon for me to see these little green bugs on my peas. In case you didn’t guess these are pea aphids, which suck juices from the plant leaves ad spread disease between plants. This is a rare occurrence because normally it is warmer and drier this time of year and we would have our annual ladybug release to take care of these little pests. If the weather holds up we should have good enough weather to do the ladybug release next weekend.
Tags: aphids, little green bugs
Getting rid of aphids on pepper plants
Jun 20, 2009 aphids, brown spots, ladybugs, peppers
First of all I am a little embarrassed that I let the infestation get this bad before noticing. I unfortunately set the grow box to have the sunrise at 1:00am and the lights always were off by the time I got home. Though the cause is not as important as how to get rid of them.
If this plant was outside my local lady bug population would have kept these buggers in check though they seemed to thrive without the vicious predators. For an outdoor plant a quick high pressure spray of water on the the leaves (as well as underside of leaves) would take care of the problem. Though this does not kill the aphids, they will starve to death before they make it anywhere to do any more damage.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: grow lights, growbox, outdoor plants, pepper plants, vegetables
3rd Annual Ladybug release
Apr 26, 2009 aphids, kids, ladybugs
In case you missed the first and second annual lady bug release, you can follow those posts. We have never had a serious aphid or spider mite problem and I like to feel our annual release of lady bugs is the reason why. Either way, great entertainment for the girls for a couple hours for a $6.00 bag of lady bugs.
Lady bugs sometimes naturally choose to wander from the location where you release them and may just take residence in your neighbors yard, so I have thought about releasing them in my neighbors yard so they will end up in mine. Fortunately there are a few tricks to help entice your lady bugs from leaving your garden.
Give them a nap. Before you release them put them in your refrigerator for at least a couple hours. This will make them go asleep (dormant) until you are ready to release them. This way when you bring them outside in their sleepy stupor they may be more inclined to check out your garden before heading over your neighbors.
Feed them. After watering your garden before releasing them spray the ground with some sugar water. This will entice them to feast on that while waiting for a the aphids and spider mites to show up.
Choose the right time. Put your lady bugs out as the sun is falling and ensure that they are shaded from sun when releasing. This will prevent them from hiding from the hot sun and possibly finding a new place to make home.
Encourage your neighbors to have their own lady bug releases. One of our friends and neighbors had a great time with their girls releasing lady bugs last year and fortunately they are close enough that we may be sharing some bugs from both of our releases.
In the past I have had good results with the releases maybe seeing 30-40 lady bugs still crawling around on my plants the next day. This year had great results with hundreds of lady bugs in my aphid killing army.
Tags: cheap, outdoor plants, vegetables
Ladybugs in the garden
The girls finally noticed the ladybugs had arrived at Home Depot, so today we had our second annual garden ladybug release. I did a bit of research and followed some advice of commenters on my previous post by spraying the garden with sugar water to give them a little extra reason to stick around after being released.
The conditions today were perfect for the release, cool, overcast evening with some light rain. Would have been advisable to wait until the sun went down for better results, but kids would probably be upset if I released them without them and pictures are worth a few escapees. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: cheap, vegetables
