Ladybugs in the Garden

Do you want some help in controlling pests in the garden?
Ladybugs are winged insects that belong to the beetle family. They are small, rounded and usually bright coloured with hardened wing cases to cover the transparent wings. The red and black markings are a warning to birds and small animals that the ladybug tastes bad. Look for ladybugs on leaves and stems of plants. They will eat aphids, mealybugs, scale insects and spider mites.

You can encourage ladybugs to live in your garden by making this food recipe. In a bowl mix with a spoon ¼ cup white sugar, 1 tsp. yeast, and 2 cups of warm water. Let sit until mixture stops foaming. Add ½ tsp. natural honey, mix thoroughly until it has the consistency of syrup. Pour into a spray bottle and spray plants where ladybugs are believed to be present. Use all mixture or discard leftovers as it doesn’t keep. Reapply a new mixture after a few days or after a rainfall. This recipe was printed in Ontario Gardener, Spring 2001 by Jennifer Moore.

Let’s make some pet rocks today. Here is how I made them.

Waiting for paint to dry can be very boring. Here are some ladybug facts to read.

Did you know that ladybug’s wings can flutter 85 times in a second?
Aphids are a ladybug’s favorite food.
The spots on a ladybug fade as the ladybug gets older.
The male ladybug is usually smaller than the female.
Ladybugs make a chemical that smells and tastes terrible so that birds and other predators won’t eat them
A female ladybug will lay more than 1000 eggs in her lifetime.

Be sure to wait for that white paint to dry before you add the blue eyes.

Ladybug legends are fun to read. I wonder if they are true?

The very sight of a ladybug is believed to be lucky; to kill one brings inevitable misfortune.
When a ladybug is placed on the hand while making a wish, the direction in which it flies away indicates that from which the luck will come.
If a ladybug lands on a person, whatever ailment the person has will fly away with the ladybug.
If the spots on the wing-cover of the ladybug exceed seven, it’s a sign of famine.
In Central Europe, people believed that if a girl caught a ladybug and it crawled across her hand, she would be married within a year.
Folklore suggests if you catch a Ladybug in your home, count the number of spots and that’s how many dollars you’ll soon find.

Never Hurt a Ladybug!

Ladybugs are in my yard
Just look at them devour
Those pesky aphids on the leaves
Of all my pretty flowers!

Never hurt a ladybug
We need them in the garden
Ladybugs help flowers grow
So we must give them pardon!

~Author Unknown~

Here are a couple of other ladybug rocks I’ve made. I don’t think I’ve shared these before on this site but I can add the directions at another time, but they are fairly easy to figure out. The one on the left is made from a paver and the one on the right is just a bit different from the ones above.