I was walking down 11th Avenue the other day and felt a pain in my arm, and when I looked to see what had happened I saw a lady bug there. What, did it take me for an aphid? I really wish it would leave me alone and start eating the fat little green bugs that love my cilantro as much as I do. You see the shriveled leaf in the picture, that's what the aphids do to my favorite herb. They also go to town on nasturtiums, another one of my favorites.
I asked a farmer at the farmer's market what to do about my aphids. Basically, he said, learn to enjoy eating them or spray poison on your food. He didn't think that there would be enough predators in the city to do any damage to their populations. Last year I bought one of those little containers of lady bugs and once we set them free, they didn't hang out long. They were gone in no time.
Eat the aphids. I think that farmer must have enjoyed telling me that.
Someone else might have told me this:
Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home
your house is on fire,
and you children do roam
Except little Nan,
Who sits in a pan,
weaving gold laces as fast as she can.
Cleaning out my kids' bookshelf, I found out a thing two about the beetles -
Their life cycle takes only a few weeks. A female lays about 200 eggs in a crevice of tree bark or on the back of a leaf. When hatched the larva looks like a tiny purplish lizard with red, blue and black spots. Called an aphid-wolf, the larva feeds constantly - about 40 aphids an hour. It drains the aphid's body juices, and eats the shell. As it grows and molts, the larva also devours scale insects, eggs of potato bettles and more.
The larva becomes as pupa with a shiny, spotted surface. The winged adult emerges from the pupa hungry for aphids and others, but it needs less food than as a larva.
In cool fall climates, huge clumps of ladybugs cluster together in forest debris, haystacks, and under bark on dead trees, under eaves of buildings - anywhere they'll be sheltered from the cold. A supergroup found in a canyon at 4,000 feet was estimated to contain 750 million ladybugs.
Insects, Silver Burdett Press, page 28.
4 comments:
Great photos! And I love the story. Good luck with your cilantro. Guacamole can't be any good without it.
Green lacewings are also effective aphid predators, and tend to stick around. I've used both ladybugs and lacewings in my gardens over the years.
There are plenty of native aphid predators in NYC. Maybe not compared to the biological wealth a farmer sees, but enough to make a difference. When I first notice aphids on my plants, within two weeks they're reduced to tolerable numbers without any intervention by me.
In addition to not using pesticides, the best thing a gardener can do is grow nectar sources. Plants with many small flowers, such as plants in the Aster/Daisy family or Umbel family: carrots, dill ... and cilantro!
Why does that help, xris?
They don't only eat aphids or other insects. They also eat nectar and pollen. The many small flowers provide additional food when their insect prey is not around, which helps keep them nearby. Plus, these food sources attract other insects upon which they can feed.
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