The Grapevine Late Summer 2019 Grapevine Aug-Sep 2019 v2 | Page 30

Creating Your Garden Paradise article by Jonathan Bishop Beneficial Insects T here are many insects that you can attract to your garden to help with pollination and control pest species. Some of these are from little known groups and it will often take a bit of time and skill to identify them. Do not dismiss all that creeps and crawls as a pest. As a gardener at this time of year we need all the help we can get in defeating the many pests in the garden, especially aphids and white fly. The aphid lion is not necessarily the prettiest creature in the garden. This transparent larvae with six legs and large jaws is a respectable consumer of aphids and white fly. It turns into the lacewing, a winged form of the same species which belongs to the order Neuroptera. The adult form has a narrow green body and wings that are lace like and twice as long as its abdomen. Sometimes the larvae will stick bits of debris to themselves to conceal them from ants. Other aphid eaters are the larvae of hover flies. These look like a translucent maggot, with a glowing green gut and can often be seen crawling and munching their way through the aphids on the back of the roses. There are some species that will eat thrips as well as other sucking insects. They turn into hoverflies in the order Diptera. There are about 250 species of these in the UK of which 40 are common. They race around the garden at 40mph and in the adult form are important pollinators. 30 They are a fabulous example of batesian mimicry and have evolved to look like bees and wasps so they themselves are less likely to become the prey of birds; unlike bees they have only one pair of wings. Look out also for the larvae of ladybirds and the lady- bird beetles themselves. These are spiky little black and red larvae with six black legs tightly arranged at the front of the body. At this time of year you can see them metamorphose into the adult beetle form. Lady- birds belong to the order Coleoptera. Not all Coleoptera are as helpful as the ladybird though; this order contains pests such as the Colorado beetle and the flea beetle which are pests of the potato and cabbage patch. Other major pests we are aware of as gardeners are slugs and snails. It is important to encourage wildlife large and small into the garden to tackle this problem. Newts, frogs, toads, hedgehogs, slow worms, lizards and birds will all eat slugs. In the insect world it is the coach beetles and the ground beetles that will tackle these pests. Ground beetles belong to the family Caribidae in the order Coleoptera. They have long legs for running, nicely polished wing cases in blue, black and purple, and pincer like jaws. If you are putting out beer traps to drown the slugs, make sure you don’t also catch these helpful creatures. Coach beetles are in the family Stapylinidae and are strange looking beetles that lack the hard casing of other beetles; they have long black bodies and when threatened To advertise call 01684 833715 or email: [email protected]