EP #25:

CORRECTION: My apology to the Treasure Coast Rare Fruit Club. In the video I said it was the Rare Fruit Council of St. Lucie.

Maybe you've had the experience of buying ladybugs and they didn't stick around long enough to finish the job as you expected. I share in this video how to attract ladybugs and KEEP them in your garden.

As you may know, Cynthia Schaefer and I bring our different approaches to organic gardening on this channel, but more and more recently I’ve been willing to give her methods a try, and I’m excited to share my experience in the past year with aphids and their predators, especially ladybugs. It was a huge success in my garden!

Ladybugs are so amazing! As well as eating aphids, they’re known to eat whiteflies, spider mites, mealybugs and more! But for now, let’s talk about aphids.

I shared about this with the Treasure Coast Rare Fruit Club recently. And since I gave this talk I continue to see this happen again, and again in the garden.

I have a theory as to why purchased ladybugs leave. Let me know what you think about this. When you buy ladybugs, they were bred in a lab, and have never had a chance to be out in nature. They’ve never had a chance to explore and fly wherever they want!

Sure, they’re going to check out what you have for them, but they don’t stick around long because they want to see what else is out as they have their newly found freedom to explore the great outdoors!

What did I do differently between that first time when the ladybugs showed up too late and what I’m experiencing now? How can we make it easier for them to show up when aphids start appearing? Here’s how, and this is the KEY… Have a sacrificial plant. I let those ants farm their aphids on that grafted eggplant tree once I saw a ladybug. And I now have certain plants that aphids love that I let the aphids have at it! That gives the aphid predators a reason to stay and even start a family here! Oh, ants are delivering us food? Fantastic! Lets lay some eggs here, and while we’re at it, let’s let our friends know about this place!

I planted my fall garden, and just as I expected, aphids showed up on my pole bean plants. It wasn’t long before the ladybugs found them, but they weren’t the only predator to find them this time. For the first time I witnessed the predatory wasp inject its eggs into the aphids! And this wasp is why I got this Blanket Flower plant. It's known to attract these beneficial wasps. I got this from my friends at Tree Amigos in Davie, and it's a Lorenziana Gaillardia.

My Butterscotch sapodilla had aphids on it a few weeks ago. The old me would have panicked, OH, let’s get that Neem oil out! Or at least get the aphids sprayed off with a hose. But I simply walked away and trusted nature to take care of it. A week later, I found that ladybugs were cleaning it up. The same thing happened with these bean vines. Then, before I even knew I had aphids on this African Horned melon, I saw ladybugs all over it having a feast!

When I featured Cynthia Schaefer in a spotlight episode, I talked about how she’s hardcore about sustainability, and that she never sprays for anything. I said that I’m not there yet. But now I can say, I’m one large step closer. I don’t know where you are with this, but I encourage you to at least give this sacrificial plant method a try. Once you get started, you won’t need to specify a sacrificial plant. Aphid predators will show up, just be patient, and trust Mother Nature to do her thing.

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