Attracting Good Bugs To Your Garden
By Ray Sher
Fall 1998

 

We often talk about organic pest control.  The best organic pest control that I know is to have as many and as diverse a population of beneficial insects in your garden as possible.  How do we attract a large diverse population of beneficial insects?  One of the best ways is to grow plants with small flowers because most parasitic insects and predators have short mouthparts that cannot reach far into flowers for nectar and pollen.  There are two categories of flowers that are especially useful in attracting beneficial insects to your garden.  These are the parsley and sunflower families of plants.

 

The Apiaceae family of plants (parsley family) have many tiny flowers arranged in clusters.  This family of plants include some vegetables, some herbs and some flowering plants.  Included in this family are carrots, parsnip, parsley, celery, celeriac, fennel, dill, cumin, anise, coriander, lovage, chervil, and Queen Anne’s lace.  These flowers produce a lot of nectar for short amounts of time, but the entire cluster of flowers blooms for some time.

 

The Asteraceae family of plants (sunflowers) are composites with many small flower parts.  These plants include artichoke, lettuce, endive, salsify, chicory, edible chrysanthemum, cardoon, sunflower, dandelion, yarrow, tansy, thistle, aster, marigold, and zinnia.  The heads of these flowers mature over a longer time than the parsley family which provides nectar for a longer period of time.

 

Remember to allow some of each of these plants to flower instead of pulling the plants right after they finish producing your vegetable or herb.  We often don’t remember to let lettuce, endive carrot, parsnip, parsley, dill, celery and others flower and stay in the garden to attract the beneficial insects.  As these plants begin to flower, you will notice how the population of beneficial insects increases.

 

If you have a good number of plants from these two families growing in your garden, you will have vegetables to eat, herbs with which to season food, beautiful flowers to enjoy, and pest control happening while you enjoy doing other things in your garden.  The small amount of effort required to start these plants in your garden will produce a great savings of your time in fighting pests. 

 

Fall is the time of year to plant most of the plants mentioned above.  So order your seed, plan where you want these plants in your garden, and every time you plant a seed just think about how healthy your garden will be.