Let’s Get Ready for a Revival!

Day #8

The Good Insects

Did you know that bugs and insects can be really beneficial for your garden? The confusing part is which one’s to try and eliminate prior to they demolishing your crops. Although I have learned that sometimes pests will come in and destroys the weak plants the stronger one’s survive. That’s pretty cool to think about huh? So not everything needs to be destroyed and eliminated. Sometimes a certain strain or type of a crop just isn’t meant to be. But sometimes you can take matters into your own hand. I will never suggest any harsh chemicals or anything that destroys our soils, I’m just not ok with that at all. We can find natural (for a lack of a better word) ways to work with the environment and what’s living in it and not destroy it. Can you be on board with that? I sure hope so! We need to take care of our soil as it’s getting extremely depleted with our farming industries and the lack of care.

Grab the Printable BELOW for Your Binder!

Head back to the Facebook group after reading and printing and tell me a bug story of your choosing.

This amazing information is from the Earthbound Farms website! This is incredibly valuable to help identify the pests that are destroying your food or the one’s who are helping. At the bottom there’s a link to download a one page printout – I highly suggest printing it out perhaps laminating it and have it with you in your garden supplies out in the garden. Kids will love it to! Plus there’s a cute little Ladybug book below.

FRIENDS NOT FOES: WE LOVE GOOD BUGS!

Does every creepy crawly creature give you the heebiest of jeebies? We hope you can learn to appreciate some of our best friends in the insect world. Not all bugs are unwanted in the organic farmer’s fields. An infestation can wreak havoc on an organic farmer’s year, but when it comes to insects, beneficial insects like the lovely lady bug, the sensational syrphid fly, or the lively lacewing (all “good bugs”) are key to helping us control the pest insects like aphids and thrips (“bad bugs”). It’s called Integrated Pest Management and it’s another way that organic farmers work in harmony with the natural ecological order to farm regeneratively and grow strong, healthy crops without harsh chemicals.

Beneficial insects help us by eating adult pests, eating pest eggs, or by becoming parasites inside pest insects themselves. Many a farmer has a story about how a particular field looked like an aphid infestation might make the crop unharvestable, only to come back a few days later to find that the good bugs have tamed the bad bugs and all’s right in the field.

beneficial insects integrated pest management

Some of the beneficial insects we use, and the pests they prey on are:

Bees are also good bugs for other reasons (pollination)…just not as predator insects dispatching bad bugs from our fields.

Host Crops as Habitats for Beneficial Insects

We build populations of beneficial insects by planting borders around our fields or rows through our fields with “host crops,” flowering plants that the good bugs like to make their homes in. We generally use plants such as yarrow, coriander, baby’s breath, California poppy, bachelor buttons, cosmos, nigella, and alyssum. Oh sure, we do feel a little bad calling the pest insects “bag bugs.” Nature made them that way. But they are bad for our crops…and good food for the “good bugs.”

More Resources on Beneficial Insects and Organic Farming:

Download our Beneficial Insect ID Chart here.

Download our kids’ activity book featuring Lilly the Ladybug here.