Plants food for ladybirds, our aphid eating friend

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Hi! Another blog about our lil’ garden friends. This time, the ladybird. They are brilliant for eating our aphids which eat our plants. If there is food for them, they will be encouraged into your garden. They are available to buy from the internet, along with lacewings, but I cannot find a food list for the latter, except nettles. Ladybirds love nettles and thistles, common weeds, which you may be tempted to leave if in an unobtrusive place.

The ladybird predators are ants, spiders and harvestmen (whatever they are, lol!) Their biggest killer tho’ is pathogenic fungi. Altho’ the 16 spot, 22 spot and orange ladybirds feed on the fungal diseases on leaves.

Ladybirds use leaf litter at bases of perennials as their homes, so don’t be too quick to “tidy” up your plants in the summer time.

The following plants are food for our friends:

Black Spleenwort
Broad buckler fern
Evening Primrose
Gorse
Great Mullein
Hard Shield fern
Harts Tongue
Ivy
Lady fern
Maidenhair Spleenwort
Male fern
Polypody
Red Campion
Royal fern
Spindle
White Campion

This information came from a free CD from Natural England as mentioned in my wildlife plants blog.

There is a book called “Ladybirds, Pest control the natural way” for £4.95 from www.oxbeeco.com for further reading. Ladybird homes are also for sale from this site, for the winter months. :-)

Hope you enjoyed this!

• 1 May, 2009
• 4 likes

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