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Showing posts with the label beneficial insects

Garden Allies - Wasps

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Welcome to part two of a series of posts looking at a range of beneficial organisms commonly known as bugs, critters or creepy crawlies that can contribute to a healthy, productive and pest free growing environment in your temperate garden ( For part one click here ) . As well as identifying key species that serve as allies to our efforts in the garden, we will look at ways to attract and keep these organisms around. Here we look at the different types of wasps we commonly interact with in the garden and although it may sound bizarre to want to encourage wasps, they do us a great service . The wasps are insects placed in the order Hymenopteran, along with bees and ants amongst others. This is a huge order containing over 40,000 known species in Europe alone, and is the only order that we find truly social insects (termites are the exception). I have selected three superfamilies of wasps to talk about here that highlight the behavioral diversity of these organisms as solitary hunt...

Garden Allies - The "Megadriles"

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During this series of posts we will be looking at a range of beneficial organisms commonly known as bugs, critters or creepy crawlies,  that can contribute to a healthy, productive and pest free growing environment in your temperate garden. As well as identifying  key species that serve as allies to our efforts in the garden, we will look at ways to attract and keep these organisms around. "It may be doubted whether there are any other animals which have played such an important part in the history of the world as these lowly organized organisms." Charles Darwin (1881) Old Charlie boy is not referring to the environmental activist but to animals belonging to the order Megadrilacea, the earthworms :) So why are Worms so important and what makes them a garden ally? There are many species of earthworms on our planet,  each specie specially adapted to particular soils and particular areas of the soil. Their chief role is that of the decomposer, keeping nutrients flo...