Pest decimation and soil upgrading
Pest control and soil improvement are the central areas in which animal helpers can save you work in the garden. In addition to birds and microorganisms, these are mainly insects and worms. Very hard-working and effective are, for example:
- Ladybug
- Parasitic wasps
- worms
also read
- Lure earthworms into the garden
- Beneficial insects in the garden - this is how you settle the helpers
- Establishing insects in the garden - this is how you attract the beneficial insects
Ladybug
In addition to their pest-killing properties, the dotted, spherical beetles are also symbolic has a very positive connotation - as a messenger of the Mother of God, as a patron saint of children or simply as a Lucky charm. In the garden, they are particularly useful because of their great appetite for aphids and scale insects. In addition to these very common and often occurring pests, they also destroy Spider mites, Bed bugs or sawfly larvae. Some species also conveniently feed on powdery mildew and mold.
A ladybug can eat up to 50 aphids a day; the Asian - "Harlequin" - ladybird is particularly effective because of this was also specifically introduced to us in Europe from Asia and is used in commercial horticulture for biological crop protection.
Parasitic wasps
The only about 5-10 mm large Parasitic wasps(€ 69.90 at Amazon *) are offered in the egg stage in specialist shops and on the Internet explicitly for pest control. You have it mainly on that Whitefly, leaf miners, aphids, cabbage whitefly, web moths and butterflies such as the corn moth or the Codling moth apart. In the house, they are also used against food and clothing moths. Parasitic wasps destroy pests by parasitizing them: They lay their eggs in the host animals, which serve as food for the larvae that later hatch - in other words, they eat them from the inside.
worms
Earthworms are some of the best soil improvers around. On the one hand, they rummage through and mix the soil through their underground creeping activity, whereby it is ventilated, loosened and opened upwards for better penetration of water.
They also transport plant residues from the upper to the deeper layers of the earth in order to eat them there. In doing so, they practically carry out the organic decomposition process of the compost heap in a turbo cycle. Your excretions are the best permanent fertilizer you can think of: it contains a lot of nutrients that can be used on the earth's surface, because the worms deposit their dung at their upper tunnel exits.