Plants food for ladybirds, our aphid eating friend
By craftnutter
6 comments
Hi! Another blog about our lil’ garden friends. This time, the ladybird. They are brilliant for eating our aphids which eat our plants. If there is food for them, they will be encouraged into your garden. They are available to buy from the internet, along with lacewings, but I cannot find a food list for the latter, except nettles. Ladybirds love nettles and thistles, common weeds, which you may be tempted to leave if in an unobtrusive place.
The ladybird predators are ants, spiders and harvestmen (whatever they are, lol!) Their biggest killer tho’ is pathogenic fungi. Altho’ the 16 spot, 22 spot and orange ladybirds feed on the fungal diseases on leaves.
Ladybirds use leaf litter at bases of perennials as their homes, so don’t be too quick to “tidy” up your plants in the summer time.
The following plants are food for our friends:
Black Spleenwort
Broad buckler fern
Evening Primrose
Gorse
Great Mullein
Hard Shield fern
Harts Tongue
Ivy
Lady fern
Maidenhair Spleenwort
Male fern
Polypody
Red Campion
Royal fern
Spindle
White Campion
This information came from a free CD from Natural England as mentioned in my wildlife plants blog.
There is a book called “Ladybirds, Pest control the natural way” for £4.95 from www.oxbeeco.com for further reading. Ladybird homes are also for sale from this site, for the winter months. :-)
Hope you enjoyed this!
1 May, 2009
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Comments
Ooooh, I think I know what you mean now, thanks for that! Lol!
1 May, 2009
Great ! I didn't know you could get them on the internet. Maybe I'll try for some this year . I haven't seen any for a very long time. I have plenty of nettles. I always leave them in the hope ladybirds will come there.
1 May, 2009
Hi Hywel! www.gardening-naturally.com sell ladybird larvae and adult ladybirds, as well as Lacewing larvae. They've also got great other products for ladybirds too! If you do get some, please write a blog about it, we'd love to hear all about it! I've just got my 2 free rose plants. If they get attacked by green or black fly, I may have to resort to this too!
2 May, 2009
Thanks Craftnutter.
2 May, 2009
Pleasure Hywel!
2 May, 2009
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Arnt harvestmen those spidery things with the very thin spindly legs abd the little round body like a raisin the middle?
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