How to Attract More Ladybugs for Natural Pest Control
Why purchase ladybugs when you can attract them to your garden naturally?
Kindra Clineff
Ladybugs are beneficial insects with a voracious appetite for aphids, leafhoppers, scale, mealybugs, whiteflies, mites, and other soft-bodied insects. Many gardeners buy ladybugs and release them into their vegetable gardens and flowerbeds for pest control purposes. However, it’s more effective to attract wild ladybugs by adding ladybug-friendly elements to your garden.
If you want to enlist the help of ladybugs in your natural pest control plan, these tips will help you attract ladybugs the natural way.
Why Attract Ladybugs?
Store-bought ladybugs are often gathered from the wild, which can destroy habitats and upset local ecosystems. They may also transmit diseases to wild ladybugs, and they often fly away immediately after release without eating a single aphid or scale insect.
However, if you add pollinator-friendly plants and other ladybug resources to your garden, you’ll naturally attract ladybugs and other pollinators, too. Plus, attracting wild ladybugs is budget-friendly, and wild ladybugs are more likely to stick around gardens for longer-term pest control.
How to Attract Ladybugs
Both store-bought and wild ladybugs are more likely to stay in gardens that provide a balance of food, water, and shelter resources. Use these 7 tips to attract more ladybugs and other beneficial insects to your space.
1. Choose Pollen-Rich Plants
While ladybugs are most famous for their penchant for eating pests, ladybugs are also pollinators that feed on plant nectar and pollen when they aren’t busy gobbling up aphids. Pollen-rich, native plants with wide, flat flowers in shades of yellow or white are particularly appealing to ladybugs. For best results, choose plants with different bloom times and plant flowers in groups of three or more in flowerbeds, or use them as companion plants in vegetable gardens.
Some plants known to attract ladybugs are:
2. Plant a Mixed Lawn
Aside from ornamental plants, ladybugs are also drawn in by clover and dandelions that sometimes sprout in grass lawns. If you have these plants growing naturally, you’re in luck, but you can also overseed your lawn with Dutch white clover seeds to provide nectar and pollen for hungry ladybugs, as well as bees and butterflies.
Related: The 8 Best Grass Seed of 2024 for a Luscious Landscape
3. Grow a Few Sacrificial Plants
Growing plants for aphids can feel counterintuitive, but if you want to entice ladybugs to your garden, plant a few sacrificial plants that are known to attract aphids to provide extra food sources for visiting ladybugs. Try early cabbage, radishes, and nasturtiums. Plant these decoys away from your vegetable garden or flowerbeds to keep aphids far from the plants you want to protect.
4. Add Water
Like other living things, ladybugs need water to drink, especially during the hot summer months. Birdbaths and other water features are often too deep for ladybugs and can pose a drowning hazard for small insects. To keep ladybugs safe, make a small ladybug drinking pool by placing clean gravel in a terra-cotta plant saucer and filling the saucer to just below the gravel line with fresh water.
5. Leave the Leaves
Ladybugs often hibernate in leaf litter and hollow plant stems during the winter, so it’s best to wait until spring to clean up garden beds. You can also intentionally grow hollow-stemmed plants, like purple flowering raspberry or Joe Pye weed, for beneficial insects to hibernate in. A good rule of thumb is to wait until the temperature is consistently above 50°F to clean up the flowerbeds in spring.
6. Make a Ladybug House
Old plant debris can provide safe shelter for ladybugs during winter, but you can make your garden even more appealing for ladybugs by adding a ladybug house. Ladybug houses can be purchased at garden centers, but you can make a simple DIY house by bundling bamboo pieces or other hollow plant stems with twine. Place the stem bundle inside a terra-cotta pot, add straw around the pot sides for insulation, and then position the pot on its side about 3 feet above the ground in a sunny section of your yard.
Related: Ladybug vs. Asian Lady Beetle: How to Tell the Good Bug from the Bad Bug
Erica George Dines
7. Go Organic
Many pesticides are generalized pesticides that can harm ladybugs along with the pests they’re intended to target. So, if you want to see more ladybugs in your garden, stick to organic gardening methods whenever possible. Try out companion planting to repel pests, and select pest-resistant plant cultivars. Rotate crops on a three- to five-year cycle and install pest barrier products like row covers at the beginning of the season. Ladybugs will thank you for it.
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