Ladybugs Can Rid Your Garden of Aphids and Other Common Insect Pests

Who doesn't remember the familiar little chant of childhood, "Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home.Your house is on fire and your children all gone." I remember repeating that little chant as a child whenever I found a ladybug in our yard, but I really had no idea what it meant.

Actually, I love ladybugs---or as a fellow blogger from Australia recently informed me, "ladybirds," as they are called in her country and also in New Zealand. Anyway, I really like them a lot.

First of all, the ladybug is cute. At least the ones in my yard are. They are usually red with black spots although here in Oregon, we sometimes see an orange, or even a greenish colored one.

It might surprise you to know that ladybugs come in a variety of colors all over the world, including orange, black, pink, yellow, and orange. A blue ladybug is said to live in South America. Since blue is my favorite color, I could really go for a few of those in my yard. Some ladybugs have just a few spots, others many spots, and some no spots at all.

Besides variety in colors, there are more than 500 different species of the interesting little bug, but they all have one thing in common---their diet is made up of soft-bodied insects. That's good news for gardeners, farmers, and for those who own stands of hardwood trees that seem to attract aphids and other types of insects.

In many places, ladybugs are considered a sign of good luck. Most of us would be happy to have more of that.

The name ladybug actually has nothing to do with the sex of the bug. Males and females, alike, are all called ladybugs. The name evolved from a time when insects were attacking and destroying crops in Europe during the Middle Ages. The farmers of that area, who were mostly Catholic, prayed to the Virgin Mary for help to prevent them from losing their livelihood. When an army of red beetles arrived shortly afterwards and ate the insects, the farmers called them the Beetles of our Lady, a name which was eventually shortened to Ladybugs, the name they are commonly known by today. (1)

Several years ago, the hardwood forests of Ohio were being devastated by insects, and the government officials there imported almost 90 thousand ladybugs that made short work of the destructive insects and saved the forests for grateful citizens of that state.

There are many other stories of how helpful ladybugs have been, and most gardeners will tell you that they are most effective in getting rid of aphids, tiny insects that love to attack garden plants-especially roses. The usefulness of ladybugs has become so well-known that stores in many areas sell live ladybugs to gardeners for the purpose of eliminating soft bodied insects. Our own Fred Meyer Store and several garden stores sell little mesh bags containing peat moss and live ladybugs by the hundreds and thousands at a very reasonable cost per bag. Most gardeners consider a bag or two each season a good investment.

Ladybugs do have wings and can fly away as soon as you release them into your yard, so if you do go to the expense of purchasing some for yourself, consider going to a little trouble to keep them once you have released them into your yard.

You can do that by constructing your own ladybug house, or buy one ready-made if you prefer. (2) To keep them safe over the winter, the ladybug house needs to be dry but have some access to water. A house stuffed with peat moss will give the ladybugs a perfect place to hibernate when the weather is cold and any container with a little water nearby will do as long as the water is refreshed on a regular schedule.

There are commercial ladybug lures you can purchase and apply to your ladybug house or even to particular plants you want ladybugs to seek out. And, if you want your ladybugs to multiply, make sure there are sources of nectar and pollen in your yard. Otherwise your ladybugs will not lay eggs.

Having said all these good things about ladybugs, I might add a comment about a time when ladybugs might not have seemed to be a good thing at all.

A recent news item about a lady in Colorado tells of an invasion of ladybugs in and around her home. So many ladybugs arrived that several walls of her house looked as though they had been painted red, and a tree on the property looked totally red. Ladybugs crawled on the family members, in their hair, and on the ground they walked on.

The lady joked that there was a saying that if you killed a ladybug, even by accident, it meant that it would rain the next day. In that case, she said, Colorado was going to be in for a lot of rain in the near future. If the video hasn't been taken down, it is really worth a look and you can see it by clicking on the link below. (3)

All in all, I don't think you have to worry about being inundated with ladybugs if you try to attract a few to your rose garden in order to save your roses from aphids. I still love ladybugs and plan to attract as many as I can to my yard and hope you do the same.

SOURCES:

1. http://www.ladybuglady.com/LadybugsFAQ.htm

2. http://www.birdsforever.com/ladybug.html

3. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/07/11/vanderveen.ladybug.infestation.kusa