The alternative beneficial insects in the garden, to the conventional chemical plant treatment - and fertilizers, naturally requires a certain amount of knowledge. A rethink is required to get beneficial insects in a garden at all. The operation of a one-sided spectrum of species, the radical destruction of all weeds and the expulsion unpleasant animal and vegetable visitors, are bad conditions for beneficial insects home.
Some animal species could certainly help us regulate harmful pathogens. They occur in nature and by designing our garden in a beneficial way, they will come by themselves and do their job.
Another point that I would like to mention is the observation and simultaneous learning of the natural interplay of animals and plants in the garden. On the one hand, the food web plays an important role in an ecosystem. The different groups in the food web have properties that we value in beneficial insects. Predators such as larvae, prey pests, and adults feed on pollen and honeydew. Other hunters include spiders, birds, bats and lizards. Parasites and microorganisms (fungi, bacteria, viruses) are also pest killers because they develop in a host animal and kill it.
There are a variety of ways to get food webs into a garden with all of these representatives. Here are some basic requirements. In order to protect beneficial insects, a chemical substance should not be used immediately against minor pest infestation aphids should be kept alive to give ladybugs a greater plague can prevent. If there are no lice there, no ladybug will come. A varied structure of the planting, if possible native, provides the beneficial insects with food. Different flowering times ensure a long, uninterrupted flowering period. Since many beneficial insects overwinter in perennials, they should only be cut back in spring. Soil litter and layers of mulch on borders and under hedges offer beneficial insects an ideal shelter, and overwintering is also possible here. Hedgehogs, weasels, ermines and polecats, important opponents of field and voles, like to overwinter in large piles of leaves, they should remain in a certain part of the garden. Piles of stones lying in the sun are ideal hiding places for newts, beetles and shrews. There are many other ways to get the little helpers into the garden.
In addition to diseases, pests are the gardener's greatest evil. Both preventive and as a sensible substitute for chemical pesticides, beneficial insects are a welcome guest. The most famous among them are the ladybug larvae. With our tips, you can use it in the garden!
Some say Nematodes, others know them as roundworms. This name was chosen deliberately because they are extremely thin animals that cannot be seen with the naked eye.
Their fluttering in the light cone of a lamp not only pulls on the nerves, depending on the species, moths also cause Damage to clothes, produce an unpleasant, musty smell or cause food to spoil more quickly. In the worst case, they can even trigger allergic reactions. Just conspecifics should fight the insects? But are ichneumon wasps really effective or are unpleasant side effects to be expected with this control method as well? And which sales outlets do the beneficial insects actually have in their range? Question after question - here come the answers.
They are tiny and yet highly effective at pest control: predatory mites, small arachnids that feed on all kinds of other animals of their size. As a result, they make an enormous contribution to pest control and also belong on a large scale (v. a. in viticulture) to the beneficial insects worth protecting.
One of nature's little creations poses a serious problem for the gardener and his green plants: the spider mite. If she is on the march, no leaf is safe from her. But nature also provided us with a solution: the predatory mite.