Beneficial Insects

The organic gardening books say to use beneficial insects to control unwanted insects in the garden. I ordered some ladybugs and 2 praying mantis cocoons from a company called Hirt's through Amazon.com. The items arrived quickly. The ladybugs were kept cold through the mail and the instructions said to keep them refrigerated until you were ready to release them. It also said you could spray some sugar water on them when you release them and they would not be able to fly away for a few days so they would get used to the garden. I decided to release all 200 of them at once. They quickly left the mesh bag as soon as they warmed up and seemed to spread thoughout the garden nicely. The praying mantis cocoons were to be attached to a stick or board and left off the ground in the garden until they hatched. I attached them to an old fence board and leaned them against the strawberry patch raised garden bed wall. I checked them every few days but never got a glimpse of them leaving the cocoon. A few weeks went by and I would see tiny praying mantis on the garden plants and a few ladybugs here and there. It was hardly enough to wipe out the number of unwanted insects that had started showing up in the garden including aphids and whiteflies. I probably saw more ladybugs in the barn than in the garden. Since our homestead is in the National Forest, I think we probably donated a good number of our beneficial insects to it. Anyway, I am sure they helped some and it was nice to know we tried our best to introduce them to the garden. Hopefully, some of them did stick around and will provide a bigger population for us in the coming year!