Let Beneficial Insects Help With Your Gardening Chores
Sustainable is one of the words gardeners will see everywhere in the coming year. Sustainable means employing practices that allow us to continue gardening with minimal long-term cost to the natural world. Those practices include everything from planting appropriate trees to minimizing water use. One practice that gardeners may forget is that of planting food for beneficial insects so they will do some of our work for us as well as eliminating the need for expensive chemicals. Entire beds placed close to fruit and vegetable gardens can be dedicated to beneficial insect food and habitat. Many beneficial-attracting plants are attractive enough to be tucked into your existing containers or herb and flower beds. Either way, try to have something in bloom for these garden helpers all the time. Bad bugs eat our garden plants and good bugs eat or live off of the bad bugs. Beneficials include predators, parasitoids, soil builders plus the pollinators. Parasitoids draw their...