A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 lady bugs

lady bugs are good for your garden right
where can you buy some

Yes lady bugs are great....They eat aphids....you need a source of food for them to be in your yard! If you have aphids they will surely come.....never bought any but I have seen them sold periodically at Home Depot, Do It Center, Ace Hardware those kind of places... If you purchase them and have no source of food I know they will fly to another yard and feast!!!

another way to attract beneficial insects are growing wildflowers!!!!

There are others who will have more info for you!

Lady bugs will also eat thrips, but as soon as they've eaten them all they fly away, just like Catlover said. I've seem them at Home Depot in the spring and summer. The people at Lowes just look at you like your nuts, so don't ask them.

I remember seeing a list of lady bug attracting plants...where was that?

And remember if you use pesticides in your garden, you will kill all the good bugs too.

Yes Rue you are absolutely correct!!!
No pesticides with Lady Bugs!!!!!

I do believe I remember reading you can
first spray them with a spray of very
diluted sugar water when they first arrive
because of the long jounery when you purchase them.
lady bugs and sugar spray....
And if you're going to attrack them, make sure you learn what their babies look like, you'd be surprised how many people have lady bugs, and are glad to have them, then come the time when they have their babies, and the babies come out, people are squsihing them because they don't know what they look like....under lovely ladies on that same article takes you to a Co~Operative section that'll shows pencil drawings of the babies.

Weezie

Hope this info helps, and Happy Gardening!

Marissa, we buy ladybugs at any good garden center, as well as praying mantis pods. A great number of the ladybugs have hung around here & we spot the little alligator-looking babies once in awhile. We must have a great buffet!

Marissa here is a page from the site that has info on beneficial insects!
http://www.thegardenhelper.com/goodbugs.html

Marissa, email us, We have ladybugs to spare, maybe we can work a deal, or p.m. us

I am CERTAINLY a ladybug LOVER!!! They are the most wonderful things! I have a line of home accents with ladybugs. Oddly enough about a month ago I went outside (DECEMBER) and on an outside tent, I found HUNDREDS of ladybugs! They were everywhere and just this weekend I found more on the property! I love having these guys around! Not only are they adorable, one ladybug can eat hundreds of aphids a day.

Here are a few facts about ladybugs:

Fact #1
There are nearly 5,000 different kinds of ladybugs worldwide
and 400 which live in North America.

Fact #2
A female ladybug will lay more than 1000 eggs in her lifetime.

Fact #3
The male ladybug is usually smaller than the female.

Fact #4
A ladybug beats its wings 85 times a second when it flies.

Fact #5
Aphids are a ladybug's favorite food.

Fact #6
Ladybugs chew from side to side, not up and down like people do.

Fact #7
Ladybugs make a chemical that smells and tastes terrible
so that birds and other predators won't eat them.

Fact #8
The spots on a ladybug fade as the ladybug gets older.

Fact #9
Ladybugs won't fly if the temperature is below 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

Fact #10
The ladybug is the official state insect of Delaware, Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, Ohio, and Tennessee.

This is probably much more than you wanted to know but you can tell why I love em so much!

This is funny...
When you buy ladybugs from a garden center, they're kept refrigerated, in sisal, in a little mesh bag. Every time we've brought them home & released them in the garden......

They INSTANTLY . . uh, "pair-up."

It's almost like, 'Hurry, hurry...before it gets cold again!!!!"

Lady bugs should come to your garden automatically if u have aphids.. They did a good job this past year in my garden, although the year before i had a major problem with aphids on my crepe myrtles.
My biggest problem last year was Japanese beetles and slugs. I had to apply sevin dust one time for the beetles (they were out of control), and the slug bait did quite well for the slugs. There comes a time when u have to make up your mind whether or not u are going to let a few pesky insects ruin your investment (your garden is an investment- time,material,labor) or do what u gotta do to protect it. Not all of us have a lot of time to spare in the summer months to constantly stand over our plants and guard them against those pesky critters...

Ladybugs can be purchased on the internet. If you do a search at google for Gardens Alive or Extremely Green you will find them.

Newt

The above link has some good prices on them. Need to talk to my plant provider about that. I think it cost me almost twice as much and I didn't have to have them sent to me:

http://www.growquest.com/free_ladybugs.htm

That's next on our list along with frogs for me and my daughter to have a kit with. Hope they're as much fun as the butterfly one.

BTW, is there a season for them? Like is it too cold now to release the ladybugs like it is the butterflies?

You all need to sit down. I vaccum up at least 500 lady bugs a day. Around November 1 for the last three years, my house has been over run with these creatures. They are usually gone by this time, but not this year. My house is still full of them. We've tried everything to keep them out. They come in on the east side of the house every year, and this year they have multiplied in numbers and they bite or sting. I've called an exterminator, it was no help. I try not to kill them, but when they are in your tea, on your bed, under your feet, and when my grand daughter, who is 4, told me they were scaring her buzzing around her head, I took to sucking them up the vaccum. They are not on my houseplants, they are not on my outside plants. Believe me I've looked. They are just in my house and on my screened in porch. And that is not true about not being able to fly when the weather is cold. When I read that I looked out the bedroom window, because it is 20 degrees and icy out there, and they are flying around outside the window looking for a place to come. I wish I could box them all up and send them to those of you who need them.

I'm right there with you! My husband and I just bought our house in July and there are lady bugs everywhere. Not as many as you have, but enough to be annoying. I get woken up in the middle of the night because there is one crawling on my face or in my ear!!! I never really took notice to see if they were outside in the garden this past summer. Is there something in the house that could be attracting them?

Someone told me that they like light colored houses and like to come in on the east side. That is the case for me. That's not true for my friend, but she doesn't have near the volume that I have. I read an article about these that says they're not real lady bugs. They were brought in from China to kill some kind of problem we had here. And since they don't have a natural predator here, they have gone crazy, kind of like kudzu. Last year they eventually moved on. Hope they will this year too.

The things found a natural predator in my house...our cats!!!! They are always looking for them to be crawling on the windows...or the ceiling...or the wall...

Bestofour, you are toooo cute!