How to Attract Pollinators and Beneficial Insects
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a tiny insect who nonetheless inspires fear and loathing in the hearts of gardeners: a hornworm. It’s early summer and the season’s first tomatoes, your favorite food, have just begun to ripen in the hot sun.
As dusk falls, you peer out from the shelter of a mite-infested rosebush and spot your dinner hanging in a tight cluster from a staked branch. The 'maters are still a little green, but that’s just when you like to get them — right before the gardener picks them.
Unimpeded, you make good time slithering across the short stretch of freshly mowed lawn and up a smooth plank border to the immaculately weeded garden bed. An army of aphids is silently laying waste to a row of romaine lettuces while a mob of mealybugs chows down on the root vegetables. A gang of stinkbugs trundle quickly over the bare soil to the potato patch. Overhead, a ghastly horde of gypsy moth caterpillars audibly munch the leaves of an apricot tree.
You are in no particular hurry. It seems as though this garden was planted just for you and your hungry cohorts. With nothing in your way and nowhere for predators to hide, you glide leisurely around the buffet of tender vegetables to arrive at the tomato plants, climb aboard a low-hanging fruit, and chomp your way inside.
Delicious. And the night has just begun.
. . . . . .
Now, let’s imagine another scenario. You are the same hornworm, but the tomatoes you crave are now at the far side of a very different lawn and garden.
As dusk falls, you peer out from the shelter of a hardy nitrogen-fixing pea shrub. Past the treacherous landscape studded with dandelion and blue speedwell flowers, you can just barely see a cluster of tomatoes behind a wall of herbs. It seems so far away. Warily, you set out for the garden.
Signs of danger greet you at every pass. Moving cautiously through a patch of clover, you encounter a big-eyed bug on the prowl for mites. Your relief at reaching the stones that edge the garden is quickly quelled at the sight of ladybugs feasting on aphids under a low shelter of ajuga and sedum. Just beyond the border, hoverflies and lacewings lurk in a thicket of lavender and yarrow, intercepting the mealybugs headed for the root patch. Overhead, a squadron of bristled tachnid flies rises from their launchpad of parsley and thyme and injects their eggs into the gypsy moth larvae climbing the apricot tree.
Slithering as quickly as you can past the carnage, you finally reach the interior of the garden. The plump new tomatoes beckon. But, too late, you see the plants are surrounded by a fortress of fragrant herbs: basil, fennel, coriander, and dill. From their watch in the fortress, a brigade of braconids, tiny brightly colored wasps, spy an invader — you — and descend to do their part in maintaining the balance of predator and prey.
. . . . . .
I use these two scenarios to illustrate rather vividly how a diverse ecological garden, designed to feed both humans and wildlife, is more useful, beautiful, and resilient to pests than a garden planted to grow food only for people. Here are some ecological truths we can glean from these scenarios and how we can make them work for us.
Nature strives for diversity. All living things have one most important goal: survival. From the dense rainforest to the open desert, the governing principle of species and ecosystems is diversity. Diversity is the key to resilience. A pristine lawn of one species (grass) and a tidy garden of a few vegetables are thus inherently weak and vulnerable, prime candidates for diversification.
In nature’s scheme of things, weeds are more correctly hardy pioneers staking out your sterile lawn and orderly garden to make a more hospitable home for more forms of life — insects, spiders, birds, and even mammals. Garden pests are really opportunistic scavengers decimating your cultivars to make room for more weedy pioneers.
Lesson: While your main goal in planting a garden is probably to grow food, nature will make room for diversity in any way possible. If you want a resilient garden, you need to create a diverse garden.
Prescription: Plant a diversity of species — edible, herbal, medicinal, and "ornamental." Plant species of different bloom times, fruit times, and seed setting times. Plant species of varying heights, root types, and root depths. Strive to create a diversity with useful plants so nature doesn’t do it for you with weeds.
Nature strives for balance. If we followed our first imagined scenario through to its logical conclusion, eventually the garden vegetables will become compost for weeds and wildflowers that house predators. The predators will then check the vegetable-gobbling population until an equilibrium is reached.
Lesson: Once you understand how a natural ecosystem works towards balance, you can anticipate and mimic nature’s patterns to achieve a desired result. To control garden pests, provide food and habitat for their predators.
Prescription: In an ecological garden, plants we think of as "ornamental," flowers especially, are actually food and habitat for beneficial insects. Pollinators are attracted to blossoms showy or demure, from brilliant cosmos to modest thyme flowers. Every food garden needs a fair share of herbs and flowers. Plant for flavor, fragrance, and beauty as well as sustenance and you will be rewarded with all of it.
In addition, many predators that keep mites, aphids, mealybugs, and hornworms in check shelter under stones, leaf litter, and mulch. Not only does organic mulch suppress weeds, retain moisture, and build soil humus, it provides cover for beneficial predators! Remember, Mother Nature is not Martha Stewart. A tidy, hyper-organized garden is an inefficient garden. Keep your soil "littered" with leaves and mulch for multiple high-performance functions.
Nature is more effective than benevolent. Honestly, my patience with people who espouse a unicorns and rainbows view of nature's ways has grown rather thin. I find that the vast majority of people who believe in a benevolent Nature have very little experience — if any — working directly with the elements. You’ve probably noticed I use words like "weeds" and "pests" without hesitation because I know what it’s like to lose a crop to ravenous insects and see plants suffocated by vines. I want to help you prevent these calamities by showing you how to create a resilient ecosystem — that also happens to be a food garden.
It’s true that we can observe many wonderful examples of symbiotic relationships in nature. And we can also observe ruthless competition and stark predator/prey dynamics. To claim that nature is only benevolent is both naïve and delusional.
Lesson: Nature doesn't give a fiddlestick about you or your vegetable garden. She has her own plans. To get what you want from nature, you have to work with her.
Prescription: Observe, observe, and observe. In order to work with nature’s patterns, first you have to see them. Once you can assess a problem, you can adjust your garden accordingly. Cultivate patience, dispassion, and prudence. Try not to overdo.
But what about natural pesticides, you might be thinking. Can’t I just spray something? Or aren't there any plants that repel pests?
These are good and important questions to be sure. Entire industries exist because of them! I will address the use of pesticides, both chemical and natural, as well as other more ecologically sound techniques for pest control in my next post.
But rest assured, the data supports the claim that a diverse garden of edibles, herbs, and flowers of multiple types, colors, and heights planted in well-mulched healthy soil is the BEST way to deter and control pests. And such a garden will surely provide more pleasure and joy for you the gardener.
For a refresher/primer on building healthy soil, see How and Why to Grow Good Soil.
At Sueño de Vida we work in a meaningful way to heal land ravaged by deforestation. How meaningful? According to a recent UN Foresight Brief on climate change,
--It is of the utmost importance to stop deforestation and to increase reforestation efforts around the world. Agricultural practices should focus on soil building, year-round soil cover with plants and the use of agroforestry methods.
That is exactly what we do here at SdV. You can help by helping us do what we do every day: plant forests that nurture soil, people, and community.
Click HERE to donate directly to our reforestation fund OR make a monthly pledge on our Patreon.
Thank you.
Kristen Krash is the director and co-founder of Sueño de Vida, a regenerative agroforestry farm, education center, nature reserve in Ecuador’s Chocó Andino Cloudforest. Prior to moving, Kristen was known for her guerrilla gardens — productive green spaces she created in any available space. Now an urban transplant in the South American rain forest, she has adapted her urban gardening and sustainability skills to large-scale reforestation of degraded land. She takes a practical and accessible approach to helping others achieve more balance and self-sufficiency in their lives.
Kristen’s articles and interviews have been featured on popular sustainability platforms like Abundant Edge and The Mud Home, and in the Rainforest Regeneration Curriculum at the Ecological Restoration Camps.