Ground Control (Beneficial Nematodes), Ladybugs, Praying Mantis
Discover how to use beneficial nematodes, ladybugs, and praying mantises for organic pest control of aphids, fungus gnats, grubs, and other damaging insects.
GROUND CONTROL
(beneficial nematodes – Steinernema feltiae)
Beneficial nematodes are tiny creatures so small you’d need a microscope to see them. They naturally live in the soil. That’s where they hunt and prey on soil-dwelling and wood-boring pests before they can grow up and emerge as destructive adults. The nematodes we offer provide organic pest control for more than 250 kinds of damaging yard and garden insects in soil, bark and ground litter, including: grubs (including Japanese beetles), fungus gnat larvae, flea larvae, cutworms, corn root worms, strawberry weevils, gypsy moth larvae, cabbage root maggots, overwintering adult insects, and many more.
Life Cycle
You apply beneficial nematodes (BN) to your soil when they’re adults. They immediately begin searching for a host, such as a grub, flea larvae, or other soil pest. They crawl inside the host and infect it with bacteria that they carry. This kills the host within 2 days. The BN then lay their eggs in the dead host. The eggs hatch, the juveniles feed on the dead host, go through some growth stages, and then emerge from the dead host to seek out new prey. This process can continue indefinitely to provide an ongoing beneficial nematode population to protect your yard.
How to Release Your Beneficial Nematodes
You can apply beneficial nematodes to your garden in several ways, depending on the area you want to cover. You can mix them with water and spray them. You can mix them with mulch and apply them directly to your soil or potting mix. And you can inject them into burrows in the trunks of trees where pests live.
Our beneficial nematodes can be applied year-round to ground that isn’t frozen. Keep out of direct sunlight. Only release nematodes in shade or during the very early morning or dusk. See directions for details.
Coverage and Application Frequency
There are about 7 million live beneficial nematodes in one of our containers. This is enough to cover up to 2,000 square feet. For faster results, you also can apply higher concentrations.
One application of our beneficial nematodes will help control pests for about 2 years. But we recommend annual applications for maximum effectiveness.
Mixing Instructions – tap to view PDF
Additional Details
Beneficial nematodes are harmless to humans, animals, and plants. They also won’t attack other beneficial creatures living in your garden, such as ladybugs, lacewings, praying mantises and earthworms.
IMPORTANT – If you don’t use them immediately, store beneficial nematodes in your refrigerator until you apply them.
LADYBUGS
(Hippodamia convergens)
Aphids are a ladybug’s favorite food. In fact, they provide natural aphid control by eating as many as 50 a day. Safe for plants, ladybugs also snack on a number of other insects, including: mealy bugs, mites, scale, bollworms, leafhopper, corn ear worm, small spiders.
Life Cycle
Springtime is mating time for ladybugs. You’ll find clusters of between 10 and 50 of their yellow eggs on the undersides of leaves. Watch for their tiny larvae, which look like orange-spotted, black caterpillars and emerge after about five days. During the two and a half weeks of their cycle they’ll consume as many as 400 aphids, but never any vegetation.
The larva creates a cocoon and becomes a pupa—the stage in which its body makes its final transformation. About a week later the ladybug emerges as an adult and starts building body fat by eating aphids, other insects, and pollen. When summer and fall arrive, ladybugs head for the mountains. Then they go dormant and spend the winter under the snow. They return to the lowlands in early spring and start feeding again. Then it’s time for them to mate and lay eggs. Soon after that, they die, the eggs hatch, and the cycle goes on.
How to Release Your Ladybugs
Always release ladybugs after sundown. They only fly during the day, so they’ll spend the night exploring the area around your home for food. And that’s where they’ll stay as long as they keep finding something to eat. More food means they can lay more eggs that will hatch into more larvae to control your aphids and other pests. If possible, water your yard and garden shortly before releasing the ladybugs. Since they like to crawl upward and toward light, release small numbers of them beneath plants and shrubs infested with aphids or other insects. You also can release them in the lower parts of trees. You don’t need to release them all at once, you can release a portion of them the first evening, store the rest in the refrigerator, then release some more a few days later.
Additional details
A ladybug’s life cycle lasts just one year. Ladybugs you receive from March through May should only be stored for a maximum of two to three days, since they’ve used up their winter supply of body fat. Ladybugs you receive from June on already have had a chance to feed, so you can store them for between two and three months.
In every container you’ll normally find several ladybugs that have died because they reached the end of their life cycle. This is especially likely in shipments that arrive from March through May. We anticipate this by giving you plenty of extra bugs in each shipment.
IMPORTANT: You can store ladybugs in the refrigerator at 35–50 degrees F for the amount of time recommended above and release them when you need them.
PRAYING MANTIS
(Tenodera sinensis)
The praying mantis provides all-natural pest control by dining on a diverse assortment of plant-damaging garden insects, depending on the age of the mantis.
Mantises in their younger stages eat: aphids, thrips, flies, small crickets, maggots, leafhoppers, other soft-bodied insects.
Mantises that have reached adulthood prey on: spotted lantern fly, spiders, grasshoppers, cockroaches, adult crickets, larger caterpillars, earwigs, chinch bugs, sow bugs, beetles, other large insects.
Life Cycle
The praying mantis life cycle lasts one year and begins by hatching out of an egg case (called an ootheca). This happens as warmer weather arrives in spring. Higher temperatures lead to earlier hatching. Mantises emerge from a seam in the egg case. Other than a small amount of what looks like sawdust that hangs from the seam, the egg case looks much the same before and after this happens. Mantises move very little, and look like their surroundings, so hatching can be easy to miss.
While most insects go through a larva stage after hatching, emerging praying mantises look like miniature versions of adults. Only about half an inch long at first, they’ll grow rapidly through spring and summer. Eventually they’ll measure five to six inches in length. In the process they’ll shed their skins multiple times.
Mantises have wings. But it will be fall before a male develops his and takes to the air to find a female for mating. Once he succeeds, the female commonly bites the male’s head off while mating, which may help nourish her eggs. Using brown foam from a gland in her abdomen, the female creates an egg case, which she may attach to a branch. Then she lays her eggs inside. A short time later, she dies. The foam case protects the eggs from winter temperatures until a new generation of mantises hatches again in spring.
How to release your praying mantises
Egg cases may be allowed to hatch indoors or outdoors but they do hatch sooner in warmer weather. Indoors, keep the egg cases in their cup and set it on a patio or a window ledge. Remove the lid as soon as you see tiny praying mantises and sprinkle them at various places in your garden. We recommend this method because you will be able to see them hatch!
Outdoors, place egg cases in hedges, bushes, or limbs. Just be sure they’re at least two feet above the ground. You also can slip the egg case into a fork in a branch. Or suspend it to help keep birds and rodents from eating the eggs by using a string or a needle and thread passed through the outside of the case. Oiling the string or thread will help keep ants away as well.
Additional details
Most insects are relentlessly on the prowl for food. Mantises, however, will happily stay in one area and patiently await a meal that comes close enough for them to use their powerful forelegs to grab it. This makes them a good choice for early in the season, before many pests arrive. Once larger numbers of pests are in your garden, other beneficial insects can start to play their roles.
IMPORTANT: Praying mantises can take one to eight weeks to hatch—please be patient!