beneficial bugs

Visitors to our home garden

~ McArtor ~ 1 Comment

Visitors to our garden are welcome!

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We were thrilled to find helpers in our garden this year – a toad, wasps, spiders and a praying mantis. They kept some of the insect pests from doing too much damage.  This praying mantis was not intimidated by the size of its prey.  After a few flashes from my camera, he flew towards it and grabbed with his long legs.  His attack reverted my attention back  to weeding and watering the garden.  Could that have been his plan? He has that “get to work” look.

Grape Tomato
It is October and we still have ripe grape tomatoes!

 

We were super thrilled to find another kind of helper in our garden this year – a little girl. Our neighbor’s tomato loving daughter picked and ate from our garden when she played outside.  A child enjoying our home garden and their veggies, that is the perfect garden visitor!

Good Bug – The Assassin Bug

~ McArtor ~ 1 Comment
Assassin Bug Nymph
Mature Assassin Bug

The pest bugs in our garden – squash bugs, flea beetles, Colorado potato beetles and others kept this Assassin Nymph well fed! I found the nymph about 4 weeks ago on an eggplant leaf. Yesterday, I found two mature Assassin bugs. I recognized them by their long hooked beaks and agile legs.  Last year, my son found an Assassin bug nymph. I wrote a post describing how we identified it. This year is the first time we found a mature Assassin bug. It is hard to miss these fierce bugs. They resemble a prehistoric animal with its spiky hump and bronze oval mark on its back.  The Assassin bug waits for insects then stabs them with its proboscis (the beak) and injects them with a toxin.  Its bite is very painful to humans. I am glad for organic help to remove the bad bugs from our garden plot, but I will keep my distance!

It’s an Assassin Bug. A Good Bug!

~ McArtor ~ 7 Comments
Assassin bug nymph in our garden plot

My son shouted, “It’s a Stink bug! I am going to smash it!”

“Wait! Let mama look at it, it might be a good bug,” said my husband.

For a gardener, my husband has an unhealthy aversion to bugs. He lets me make the good bug or bad bug call.   I put down my shovel to look at the bug.  My son pointed to a leaf on the sunflower plant growing out of our compost bin and declared, “There it is!”

The insect had a colorful body and long antennae.  It did not look like a Stink bug.  Its legs were too long and graceful.  It scuttled so fast around the leaves that I barely caught its image in my camera.   We let it be.  The next day,  I sent its photo to the Home and Garden Center at the Maryland Agricultural Extension. Within a few hours, I received the bug’s identity.   It is an Assassin bug nymph!

We are thrilled to have such a voracious predator in our garden plot.  This bug will help rid our garden of: aphids, Colorado potato beetles, cucumber beetles, Japanese beetles, Mexican bean beetles, tomato hornworms and many more pests.  I am glad we did not squash it!