Happy Earth Day!

According a News Miner article in 2010, 450 species of Lady Bird Beetles are found in North America. We are fortunate that Alaska has 26.

A week ago, in the flower farm that is our garage at the moment, we began to see a few aphids. We know from many years of growing that aphids can get out of control in a hurry. Our local greenhouses weren’t carrying ladybugs yet because it’s too cold to release them. So, we resorted to online.

Because we live in a small community, our postman sent a text that said something like, “I have something live for you in a package”. I was excited because the shipment was supposed to take until Monday. We jumped in the car and picked up our little army.

The package was small but it contained 1,000 insects.

When we got them home, we immediately mixed up a little honey water to feed them some sugar. We put drops around the plants for them to drink and poured a good amount on a scrap piece of flooring. Then we sprinkled the beneficial insects around.

Immediately they started to drink. We watered the flats and pots of plants too so that the beetles think this environment is a good place to stay.

Happy Earth Day. At our farm we don’t use harmful pesticides but try to study the environment and see which natural systems are in place that we can take advantage of.

But this whole ladybug thing has us wondering… how many species of aphids do we have?