Best place to buy ladybugs

[Sam]

I would like some ladybugs for my SMALL garden. 9foot by 5 foot. I have ants, so I assume aphids. Where is the best place online to by a small qty of them.

Any tips for keeping them around?

[Sam]

[Tom J]

The only problem, in my area anyway, was when the orange lady bugs appeared by the thousands in the yard as well as in the house, I haven't seen a red lady bug since. That was 5 or 6 years ago.

Tom J

[The Cook]

Careful. I don't know the whole story, but someone brought in ladybugs into this area a few years ago. Now they are everywhere and do like to come in when the weather cools.

[Omelet]

But I'll bet you have few garden pests! They eat aphids, scale, mealy bug and other things. Another good predator are lacewing larvae. I got rid of a persistant scale infection on the succulents in my greehouse using those...

[Omelet]

I brought in a couple of hundred here and never had a problem. The seem to like to pupate in my asparagus patch.

[Omelet]

Okay, so nobody else answered your question... I've seen them for sale in various garden catalogues and I don't think it seems to matter. I bought some beneficial nematodes at random and have had very few fleas since!

Let's try google:

thru the sites the search turned up and just choose the best price with a LIVE DELIVERY guarantee. :-)

I got lucky and got mine for free. I went out to the employee parking lot one night and evidently they were migrating! They were all over the cars under the lights.

I spend two hours gathering as many as I could find...

[Persephone]

How does one gather ladybugs?

Persephone

[Katey Didd]

Don't waste your money. They will leave your garden in hours.

[Omelet]

Picking them up off the car hoods/bonnets carefully with fingernails and placing them gently into a jar. ;-)

Seriously, they were all over the cars in the lot! This was around midnight.

When I was a kid, I used to gather them for mom out of a local field where they were all over the grass.

[Omelet]

But they left their eggs. :-) I've had a good population now for several years. When I dumped my lot, I put them onto some grapvine leaves that were covered in Aphids.

Feed them and they will at least leave some progeny.

You can also, as I said, purchase lacewing eggs. That way you get the best predatory stage. The larvae.

[Katey Didd]

I remember my ex-husband releasing them in our large vegetable garden years ago. At least 90% were gone the next day. A few days later we didn't find any. Same thing with praying mantis he bought. We never ordered any more beneficials.

[Omelet]

How wet do you keep the yard?

I'm sorry you had bad luck. It worked very well for me!

I did, however, have a similar experince with a mantis casing. I found a few the next year but the trouble with those is that they are cannibals.

[tstovall]

[MrMe]

Lacewing - Don't the larvae eat azalea leaves ? Something was devastating our azaleas. When we described the symtoms to the local aggy extension service they said it sounded like lacewing. It took forever to spray them away with various pesticide applications. If you have azaleas around and you enjoy them, stick w/the ladies ...

= Me =

[jellybean stonerfish]

[e-mail]...

Not true. If they have a supply of food, and you mist your plants with water before releasing them in the evening, they will hang out. Then if any of them are fertile they will lay eggs. You want them to lay eggs. After you find some eggs, protect them. When the larvae hatch, move them, by picking a leaf they are on, and put the leaf on a plant with problems. The larvae are what I like to have around. They start off very small, and grow bigger and bigger each day. If you have a plant like fennel, that is wispy, it makes a great lady bug factory. The larvae are easy to find, little dark specks on the thin green leaves. And if you mist it, it holds lots of tiny droplets of water. Once you discover what the larvae and the eggs look like, and learn to protect them, you will never be without lady bugs. Oh, one more thing, don't put any pesticide on your plants or your lady bugs will die. Also let your factory plant have aphids.

You can also move a leaf with egg clusters, but I find that letting them hatch first and moving the larvae works better.

I have a very small scale garden, but I think it would work the same, if you have time and a bigger space.

Now if I could figure out how to make the decollate snails stay.

stonerfish

[aluckyguess]

[Omelet]

Do they garden?

[Omelet]

Huh. The eggs I was sold were supposed to be strictly predators. I bought them at one of the nurseries to get rid of the terrible scale problem I had, and it did work...

[Omelet]

My ladybug larvae seem to live mostly in my Asparagus. Guess they like the whispy leaves when I let them fern.