Beneficial Bugs and Your Garden: How Do I Keep the Good Bugs In?

When planting and nurturing a garden I seldom like to see one of my wonderfully blooming tomato plants covered in bugs. For the many years I have been planting and growing vegetables there has never been a summer when bugs did not interfere with my work. But, what if the bugs attracted to my tomatoes were the ones responsible for turning that beautiful yellow flower into an edible red fruit? Many insects are truly beneficial to your garden and need to be treated with kid gloves in order to keep the balance between good and bad bugs this summer.

Good bugs are bugs that your plants need to flourish and provide the end product all gardeners are working toward, fruit. It is sad to say though that many bad bugs visit along with the good ones. From this dilemma comes the problem of removing the bad bugs from your garden while keeping the beneficial ones around. Through tried and true methods, you can move your garden from pest filled to pest free.

Before we delve into explaining how to remove bad pests from your garden, let us take a minute to list a few of the beneficial bugs you want to have around. Bees, nematodes, centipedes, beetles and spiders are perfect examples of bugs that truly help a garden. For instance, bees pollinate the plant flowers moving the plant into the fruition stage and spiders love to eat on plant munching aphids and other pesky plant wreckers.

As for methods of preventing harmful pests in your garden, that is simple.

You must first refrain from using any chemical pest removal sprays or dusts such as diazinon, malathion and carbaryl. These broad spectrum bug killers will also kill the beneficial bugs; thus, leading to spraying more and more chemicals on your fruits and vegetables.

Secondly, placing ant traps throughout your garden will help to control the ant population. Ants may not seem like a pesky pest, but they will offer a food source to spiders and other aphid eating bugs. By controlling the ant population, the aphids and other harmful bugs will be your beneficial bug's primary food source for the summer.

Though many of us do not like them, spiders are beneficial to a garden!

Credit: Luc Viatour

Copyright: Luc Viatour