Water First
Weight Watchers teaches you to eat well, and South Beach helps break sugar cravings, but have you heard of the Ladybug Diet? Those red-spotted beauties consume several times their body weight, ridding your roses of numerous garden pests. I wish I could consume several times my body weight in a day and remain looking as fresh as the Coccinella septempunctata.
Ladybugs, also referred to as ladybirds, eat Aphids, Spider Mites, Thrips, White Fly and other harmful pests. They are a boon to organic gardeners and a treat for the youngsters in the house, who enjoy setting them out at dusk.
Most garden centers now sell containers of live lady bugs. I bought ours at Almaden Valley Nursery. Keep them in a cool place during the day when they’re inactive.
Tuesday night we watered the infested plant, cut open the mesh bag and offered them dinner. By morning, they had done a decent job eradicating the pests. Some years it takes two “applications” to wipe out the aphids or flies, but it’s always a treat to see hundreds of them gathered in one place so we don’t mind.
Ladybugs and Aphids
Garden Lady’s: Nature’s Pest Control
Dinner Awaits
It’s 9:00. Do you know where your ladybugs are?
Read more about these farming heroes and the origin of the ladybug rhyme at Animal Planet.
Gardening Nirvana 
That’s amazing, I’ve never known you could buy bags o bugs! Brilliant idea and hope they do the job.
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Ladybugs are wonderful. Can you imagine my surprise when digging around the base of our wonderful pine trees at 7200 feet in Arizona and finding massive colonies of them. They loved the pine trees as did the humming birds. Who would have guessed it. I too wish I had their metabolism. 🙂
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Wow! What an amazing story. We have one, large neighboring pine. I wonder if they will flock there once the ready-meal is gone? Do the ladybugs like to winter there do you think?
Thanks for commenting and for sharing that amazing story.
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Isn’t it amazing these cute speckled little workers just go about their business while you get other chores done. I always wonder why they don’t just fly away.
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I guess as long as they have a meal, they are happy to stay. I checked on the roses again today, and those ever-efficient ladybugs seem to have picked the plant clean. Amazing and wonderful, isn’t it?
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And you don’t have to worry about your kitty’s being around some nasty garden herbicide or bug killing chemical stuff. Just business as usual in kitty town. I can hardly believe they ate alllllll those bugs so quick, you’re right, we need their metabolism, that’d be so awesome….dream on! lol
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I checked yesterday to see if I needed to buy more lady bugs and the aphids/white flies are gone! Amazing. Now we need to tackle a different infestation (scale) on our dwarf Magnolia.
You’re right about the garden toxins. It’s nice not to worry about it with animals.
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O snap, if it’s not one thing it’s another. I’ve not heard of ‘scale’ before, is there a green solution for that too?
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We currently have (or had) three infestations, all in the front garden and fairly close together. The scale showed up on the inner branches of the Magnolia so it was easy to miss. It gives me the creeps We are going to try to find additional beneficial insects to help, and whenever I find a spider indoors, I’m taking them right to the tree. If you want to read more: http://www.greenharvest.com.au/pestcontrol/scale_info.html
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Looks darn right nasssssty, hope you get a grip on it. The whole ant thing is really freaking me out lately. They are everywhere, I guess it’s the hot weather? We even see them at brand new house builds.
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