What Bugs Are Good For Your Garden?

Whether you like bugs or not, some of them are good for your garden. The average homeowner doesn’t like having to navigate a sea of insects and arachnids while doing yard work. However, it’s unavoidable, and many of them are more beneficial than you may think. So, what bugs are good for your garden?

Bugs like butterflies, bees, beetles, ladybugs, and hoverflies are good for your garden. Spiders, green lacewings, assassin bugs, and praying mantises are great predators and they kill harmful pests, like aphids and spider mites. You can attract beneficial bugs if you plant dill, fennel, verbena, parsley, cilantro, and lemon balm.

Harmful pests are particularly attracted to crops like cabbage, cauliflower, kale, and tomatoes. Aphids and spider mites are the worst bugs in your garden. Follow along as we explore what bugs are good for your garden and see how you can attract them.

Ladybugs are good for your garden because they kill some of the most harmful pests in your yard: aphids. Aphids feed on your plants and can eventually cause them to wither and die. A ladybug can eat as many as 5,000 aphids in its lifetime, and they typically only live for a year.

They typically love flowers with flat tops, such as fennel and dill. While having too many ladybugs can be a nuisance, they can work wonders to protect your garden from unwanted and harmful pests.

Not only are butterflies beautiful, but they are endlessly good for your garden. Butterflies help pollinate your garden as they fly from flower to flower and spread pollen. Harvester butterflies even eat pests such as flies.

They look for sweet smelling flowers that produce lots of nectar. You can attract butterflies to your garden with colorful flowers, marigolds, and fruit. Plant a butterfly bush to welcome as many butterflies as possible to maximize pollination in your garden.

It’s no secret that bees are great pollinators. They fly around your garden in search of nectar, and in doing so, they spread pollen to your plants. This pollination is essential for your plants to grow and thrive throughout the spring and summer.

Honey bees, squash bees, bumble bees, and mason bees are the best for your garden. However, you can’t go wrong with any type of bee as they are all mostly good for your garden. Carpenter bees are the only type of detrimental bee, but that only applies if you have a wooden deck or fence.

While many peoples have an understandable fear of spiders, they are good for your garden. Spiders eat a variety of bugs that are pests to any homeowner, such as mosquitoes, flies, and aphids. Some types of spiders are dangerous, such as black widows and brown recluses, but standard jumping spiders and wolf spiders are good for your garden.

The best kind of spider for your garden is any kind that moves around a lot. Crab spiders and wolf spiders in particular are quite mobile and prey on a variety of pests. They can wind up in your house, but they’d much rather be outside eating mosquitoes.

Pirate bugs instill fear in many pests much like their namesake seafarers did on the open waters many years ago. They are attracted to plants like spearmint, goldenrod, and marigolds. The main benefit of pirate bugs is that they can kill spider mites and help protect your plants.

While they are beneficial to your garden, pirate bugs can be annoying to be around. They frequently land on humans, which is annoying, but they are unlikely to bite. Pirate bugs are less likely to land on you if you wear pants and a long sleeve shirt.

The best plants to attract beneficial insects are dill, fennel, buckwheat, and mint. Other plants like verbena, cilantro, lemon balm, and parsley can also attract beneficial insects. Predatorial insects like hoverflies, bees, ladybugs, green lacewings, and praying mantises defend the area around these plants from pests.

Many of these plants, such as cilantro and parsley, are also harvestable and work well in countless recipes. Exercise caution with crops like cauliflower, cabbage, tomatoes, and onions, which all attract harmful pests. You can offset the risk of attracting pests to your garden if you plant beneficial insect-attracting plants nearby.

Ladybugs, butterflies, bees, spiders, and praying mantises are among the best bugs that are good for your garden. Spiders and praying mantises are fierce predators and kill many unwanted pests. Green lacewings, pirate bugs, and assassin bugs help kill harmful pests, such as spider mites, as well.

Plant verbena, lemon balm, cilantro, dill, and parsley to attract beneficial insects to your garden. Crops like tomatoes and cabbage sadly attract unwanted pests to your garden, such as aphids.