Delouse your garden with ladybugs

On a warm spring day, I was pleasantly surprised by my first lady bug sighting of this year. Ladybugs are considered lucky in many cultures, and no wonder! These little lucky miracles protect our plants form aphids. 

Don’t let their cute as a button looks deceive you, ladybugs are ferocious predators. A single ladybug can eat over a hundred aphids a day!

Why is this so wonderful? While I love most animals, even pesky ones, aphids are right on top of my black list. Aphids, also known as plant lice, greenflies, blackflies or whiteflies are the vampires of the plant world. These sap sucking monsters are one of the most destructive insects on cultivated plants. 

While they do have a variety of natural enemies, aphids are a highly successful species.
They reproduce like crazy. Females can give birth even without mating and within two weeks, those monsters are also able to reproduce. Before you know, your garden is infested and your hard work is eaten. Damn them all.

So how do you prevent your plant babies from getting sucked to death by these monsters?! There are several home remedies and insecticides you can use on your plants. This includes spraying your plants with water or a mixture of soap or oils. However, not all plants tolerate this treatment and really, I just don’t have the time to scan my garden for aphids every day and killing them manually. 

So I contract some ladybugs and let them do all the work for me. And the great thing is, attracting ladybugs isn’t that hard, expensive or time consuming.

Here are my top five tips for employing ladybugs:

1. Make a container with nettles in your garden. Nettles will attract the harmless nettle aphids. These will hardly harm your garden, but ladybugs love to lay their eggs next to them.
2. Don’t use pesticides. You will kill some aphids, but also your ladybugs. And bees. And all the other very useful bugs. And maybe your pets as well. Big shame on you.
3. Be patient. The ladybugs will not be swarming your garden the very next day. Once there is enough to eat, they will come.
4. Make a hibernating place for ladybugs. Ladybugs love dried out plants with hollow stems. Make a bed for them with dried garden angelica or fennel. Never interrupt hibernating ladybugs, they will not survive the wintery cold.
5. Found a ladybug larvae? Place it somewhere near an aphid colony.  Ladybugs and their larvae can’t see or smell so they can only find prey if they happen to bump into it.

If you follow these tips, your garden fill soon be the home of some happy eating ladybugs. Chomping away all the nasty aphids. Now please bare in mind that this method will not rid your garden from aphids completely. A ladybug never eats all the lice in a plant. They will however keep them under