My list of natural pest predators/beneficial organisms - anyone add to it?

Morning everyone,

As I am planning to use no pesticide/herbicides whilst growing my grob, I am planning to use some of natures organisms to help do the job of controlling pest numbers (in addition to other methods).

I have made a list of some beneficial organisms and I will do some research on how best I can attract them to my patch.

If I have missed any please add it onto the thread!

Invertebrates
- Bees: social & solitary
- Wasps: social & solitary e.g. parisitoid wasps (good predators)
- Ladybird beetle
- Lacewings
- Dragonflies/damselflies

Birds
- Robin
- Blackbird
- Sparrows (seen all of these species hunting on the ground and amongst plants)

Amphibians
- Frogs & Newts

Mammals
- Hedgehogs

Soil Micro-organisms
- Predatory fungi

Many thanks,

Samuel

 

I have been really struggling with aphids, especially on roses, trying not to use chemical insecticides on my garden.

This year, 2021, had such a cold spring that most things in my garden seem at least one month behind, if not two, and since spring the aphids have been devouring everything, especially miniature roses. I tried ladybirds several times, SB plant invigorator, which I probably overused, and unlike with systemic insecticide the aphids come back very quickly after using it. In a last desperate attempt I recently tried lacewing larvae.

I do keep finding the very occasional ladybird, ladybird larva or ladybird pupa, but still my miniature roses were covered with aphids (greenfly). I also have a big patch of feverfew, which has in the past few weeks come into flower. And I have quite a lot of Erigeron, Mexican wall daisies. Just over the past couple of weeks I have noticed that my big patch of feverfew has gone from being covered with aphids to almost completely clean, and I found a few black groundbeetles crawling among it, and also on my Erigeron daisies.

The groundbeetles seem to have virtually completely stripped the aphids from the big feverfew patch, and I think they are dealing with slugs for me too. The strange thing is they don't seem that interested in eating the greenfly on my miniature roses or my cyclamen seedlings (which are so delicate that I have been removing them with a tiny paintbrush every day for weeks).

It had never occured to me that groundbeetles were such garden angels, and I can't find it anywhere but I am wondering if they are especially attracted to feverfew, or to the daisy family in general?

I noticed that my feverfew were clean of aphids before I applied the green lacewing larvae, without much faith that they wouldn't just vanish like the ladybirds had. Also there are ants everywhere, and I read that lacewing larvae get eaten by ants, though they look like tough little creatures as big as an ant. The ground beetles are much bigger than ants and I wouldn't be surprised if they can eat them?

Having gone to such a huge effort for months to try to use predators and organic solutions to aphids, it came as a total surprise that the most effective predator so far seems to be one that came into my garden for free and very thoroughly cleaned up the aphids, and I have never read anywhere about ground beetles doing this. They would be far tougher against ants than other aphid predators like lacewing and ladybird larvae? Maybe tougher against spiders as well, and my garden is full of spiders and cobwebs, which probably clean up unwanted pest insects in their own right, but I did find one ladybird caught in a spider's web a couple of months ago, I freed it but not sure if it survived, or how susceptible ladybirds are to spiders' webs....

 

More photographs of the groundbeetle, on the feverfew.

 

Why does your ground beetle look like a vine weevil?

 

@groundbeetle Sorry to say this but I think @flounder is right and you have vine weevils on your feverfew. They are strictly vegetarian. Below is a ground beetle or three

Info on ground beetles Ground beetles and rove beetles there are many different species of ground beetle in the UK and they generally take larger insects than aphids and tend to be ground living.
As for your feverfew the ants could have done away with the aphids.
Hoverflies and their larvae cheerfully tuck into aphids.

 

Ok, thanks, so it is a vine weevil. I just looked it up, and it seems to be what it is. I will have to think what to do, they sound bad news. Just when the aphids miraculously cleared up, by whatever creature is eating them.

I don't want to use chemical sprays on flowering plants because I like bees and hoverflies and don't want to harm them, and I also like ladybirds and lacewings and don't want to harm them either. This evening I had a good look at my plants, and there are lots of lacewing larvae busy on them, though they do seem to prefer the little companion plants to the roses. There was also a little two spotted ladybird running round and round the rim of a plant pot. And loads of hoverflies on various flowers. (I didn't realise hoverflies and their larvae eat aphids, I thought they were just sweet pollinators who enjoy flowers).

These photographs I took a few weeks ago might be hoverfly larvae on my feverfew?

 

Shiney, thanks for that information. I have a lot of odd things I grew from seed, including two French Marigolds in little pots, one looks almost ready to flower. And some of the flowers are fairly highly scented.

I have some nasturtiums in wall baskets, still only leaves at the moment but they are starting to get blackfly, which so far my garden hasn't had, only an infestation of greenfly - so bad they coated the growing tips and flower buds of roses, whose blooming is much later this year than last year; they are now starting to flower, and are quite heavily scented.

 

This evening I still found lots of lacewing larvae on my miniature roses, and a tiny two spotted ladybird. The lacewing larvae seem to be busier pursuing the greenfly.