Well have you completed the chapter on fertilizing successfully it's now time to move on to the next chapter on insect control part one, we'll have two parts on insect and it is one of my favorite areas because the insect world is so fascinating. This is not the approach we recommend trying to kill all the insects in the garden doesn't make any sense at all waste money, and it's toxic. The toxic chemicals that used to be on the market things like DDT and cordain and deodorant and, and things like that, who were horrible. The the products on the market today are still horrible. The toxic chemistry way of controlling insects is toxic in it really doesn't work doesn't work nearly as well as the natural organic approach the sum of the chemicals on the market have been brilliantly marketed to make people feel like they're very safe and things like seven or are among the most toxic and dangerous chemicals still out there.

And the insects that are attempted to be controlled with seven can more easily be controlled with other techniques. And we'll get into all that. But the first part of the insect talk today is to talk about the really natural way to control insects and not just to work with nature. We want to use materials set up condition so that we stimulate all of the things in the garden in the landscape of the farm and the ranch that helps us with the insect control. We want to stimulate and help in and take care of the birds and the lizards and frogs and toads and all the things that help us with insect control. They're very important parts.

Nature in parts of the garden if you're spraying toxic chemicals, you're hurting these things. There's no question about that. We want the pollinators. We want the beautiful insects and just add a lot of interest to the garden as well. A lot of the insects like flies, that's the hover fly that's such a great pollinator and it's larva is a wonderful predator. We'll talk about all these different things, but just in general, remember that most of the insects that you see in the garden are beneficial, they're helpful, they're not pests.

The ones that are pests are the minority. And if you allow working with the natural parts of the garden, a farmer ranch you can control them without having to spray much of anything. Plus, just enjoy the beauty. In the meantime, the little butterflies, there's beautiful malls There's all kinds of beauty in the insect world. In fact, we plant plants intentionally like this ice plant here to attract the monarch butterflies and we plant a lot of different plants to attract various kinds of pollinators. I think my best advice on attracting beneficial insects of the garden is this plant is many different varieties of annuals and perennials and flowering trees and potted plants as you can that have different colors of flower that flower in different seasons and have different fragrances is much variety as you can and that's how you get this wonderful natural display happening in the garden.

Including things like this gorgeous insect here. One of my favorites is the butterfly moth. It looks like a looks. Hummingbird moth I'm sorry, it looks like a hummingbird and it is just a beautiful. There's several that are a little different looking and you'll see him when you start going organic, you'll start seeing these, these wonderful creatures just appear in the garden. Now to start the ball rolling we do.

Some things are very proactive if the budget allows it that are direct insect control techniques, one is releasing beneficial nematodes, which you see here. beneficial nematodes are microscopic worms. They look like that under a microscope. There are several hundred different kinds of beneficial nematodes and there are destructive nematodes as well. using them helps to balance the good and the bad and the soil and the beneficial nematodes help with the control of a whole bunch of pests. A lot of the past that have at least one of their life cycles in the ground.

Beneficial nematodes will take care of fleas, ticks, termites, grub worms, lots and lots of different paths. These nematodes very inexpensive will help you control and then the second one is trick a grandma wasps tricker grandma was released will help with all kinds of caterpillar's including what you see here. This is pecan case bear that's the residue the waist and workings of pecan case bear which can really destroy a lot of the pecan production when their own red residential side or a large commercial site. The beneficial nematodes can be purchased and released from something that looks like this. It looks like a kind of a delicate sponge almost you pull little pieces of it in throw into water and either Spry are put out with a large Watering Can they mixture on the soil. Another way to get beneficial nematodes comes in I blue sponge like you see there, you simply take the wet sponge out, cut it into pieces, put it in water, squeeze it out that releases the nematodes in the water.

And then the name tags can be sprayed are dumped on the ground with a big watering can, which is what I often do, it's really easy on the large watering cans. And I simply walk around, splashing it out. The trick of groundwater, which goes with this two step release, they're both done in the spring, when things when bugs are swelling and when the leaves are just starting to emerge is when we do the first release of both these beneficials the trick of aroma was Come on either cards or little one inch squares, all the bumps that you see there are more things inside the mouth is the entire lifecycle of the trigger. washed, the female emerges she flies off, finds a moth egg parasitized them all thick and the caterpillar, which would become a green worm attent Caterpillar, a forest themed Caterpillar, web worm, whatever destructive Caterpillar is never born.

So this is a preventative way to control Caterpillar damage. The green worms that eat your cabbage and lettuce and spinach in the garden. This is the way to head off that problem. This is the smaller one inch guard there's about 3000 Mall figs on that one inch card, very cost effective. All you do to release the Stricker ground was is pin the card or the strip up onto a tree opposed to fence or something like that. The only way it can go wrong is if you have fire ants in your garden and they are very easy to control and I'll tell you about that in the next course.

But trick Graham was very important beneficial nematodes, very important for all growers. Now, some of the insects that most people would at first consider pests are really not necessarily pests. They're more of a help than a nuisance or a pest. They're indicator insects. In other words, these are aphids. aphids come in many colors, many sizes, some have wings, some don't have wings.

They are they would probably under nuclear war would be laughed after it was all over property roaches and iPhones. iPads are tough and they they're gonna be around they're even some very large aphids like these are larger than ladybugs are called the bark. Bark aphids and usually When we see them, we don't even do anything except just kind of be amused and interested in them. They do a little bit of feeding, like you see their own thin bark trees, but do very, very little damage and require no treatment at all. But the other iPads that you see here some similar to the first shot that I showed you, these are different color obviously they're yellow, you can tell an aphid because they're stuck to the plant or mouth part is in the plant. And what that aphid is telling you is that that plant is in stress in their their own property, and on the plant to help take out, get rid of an unsuited plant, a plant that is in stress.

So that's how an aphid is beneficial to you. It tells you that there's something wrong, you're doing something wrong. You're watering too much. You're watering, not enough. You're fertilizing too much Too little or with the wrong fertilizer, the ground is not draining properly. you've planted something in the shade and it should have been in the sun.

See what I mean? Every of every time you see aphids and other insects do a degree to own a plant you know that the plant is in stress. Now we can take care of them you can spray this plant with water, put your finger over a hose, or use a little nozzle and spray the plant the water blasting the plant will take the aphids off leaving their mouthparts in the plant. That's all you have to do to control Nathan. You can kill them with soapy water very easy. It's the first insect that I ever controlled with an organic pest control technique.

But you see the same aphids here they're stuck in there and they'll tend to interact really interesting. You can see him if you try to touch him to kind of move like a wave they'll move together and that community mics on easier to control I think because whatever Do it knock them all out very, very easily. Other things that will control aphids and other small pesky insects and things like ladybugs Ladybug is the poster child of beneficial insects. Everybody knows what ladybugs are actually their beetles, Lady beetles. This is one that's important. This one's from Japan.

It's called the firm Monica. Lady bail. You can tell by the great big white splotches on the pro note them this Sheila behind the head, they're just as beneficial as our native lady beetles. But they do one thing that's a little bit irritating sometimes in the winter that you'd like to come inside. They like warm temperature and when they do scoop them up and throw them back outside. We've even found them in high rise office buildings in downtown urban areas.

Very interesting lady beetles that is an import and the colors all vary. This is Harmonia again, Jeff Please import, you can see, it's a completely different color and different patterns, you see all different colors and basically the same size, they'll be all basically the same size as our native Ladybug. That's our native. This one is called a convergent convergent Ladybug because of those converging white lines on the pro note them. very beneficial. You can purchase them and release them.

Like my daughter Logan is doing right there. And it's fun to do. I think it really gets you into thinking about how wonderful the insect world is and how easy it is to control. The cost effectiveness of buying ladybugs and releasing them is questionable, but it's so much fun. It's not very expensive, and I think it's great to do with kids. They will control a lot of Have harmful pests.

Now when you're in your garden and you see some aphids on a plant like I was showing you, there's another thing you need to do. And that's look around, see if you see anything that looks like that. If you see that insect, you want to step back and just smile and enjoy it. That's the larva of the lady beetle of the ladybug and the larvae. He more pests like aphids, then the adults do. So you want to leave them alone, protect them, not spray evenly, organic spreads you don't want even in a case where you're seeing a lot of beneficials you don't want to use the organic pest control products, soapy water, orange oil Spinoza those kind of organic tools will kill the beneficials too.

So don't do that. This creature looks like an alien is the pupa forming from that larva again. Lady beetle, you see little insects here various scale aphids, various things. And that's what it forms. When it's complete. That's the pupil case, the pupa of the lady beetle.

It happens to be the Harmonia this fascinating Ladybug here. This one, you'll see a lot if you simply watch your trees in your garden. You'll see this lady beetle on the trunks of trees often in the really early spring. It's called the twice stabbed lady beetle. For obvious reasons. It's usually more round in shape.

Dark black, little smaller than the other lady beetles. And it's especially good on scale insects and other insects in your trees. It's a tree tree Ladybug. That's what it's eggs look like little yellow footballs on in and when you see You that don't want to spray or or hurt them in any way. Also, this is the same insect as well. That's the pupa It looks like a little black sea urchin, and when it splits open you the adult form comes out of that pupil case.

Very, very beneficial. The next one that you need to know about is green lacewing. The green lacewing is fantastic because it is as effective or more effective than lady beetles. It's a beautiful little delicate fly you see here and the green lacewing will often when you go out the door at night and you have a light or in the evening you'll see things flying around. You might think that they're malls, a lot of times there'll be this beneficial green lacewing and it is a terrific insect for controlling a lot of small pests. It comes in green or in brown.

This is the brown lacewing and something for you to know that's important is when you see something like that on a stem of a plant or back of a leaf. Those are the eggs of the green lacewing. When they're round and have still a little bit of a green cast to them, they haven't hatched yet, when their flight and look like popcorn popped open, they've hatched and it doesn't hurt to hurt them at that point. But when they're in this stage, you don't want to hurt them. What comes out of those little eggs is this little alligator looking larva that looks like a small version of the lady bug larval variable, very, very voracious, eating small pest insects, and a terrific friend. You see one of the larvae eating a big aphid in this shot here.

Now one thing that will happen is they'll lay eggs on door jambs own door facings on the edge of light, this is my hard hat. You my garage you can see they've laid eggs on the hardhat. So anytime you see that he's trying to protect that for a while until it looks like popcorn that's popped open and you know that they've been protected and they're off doing their job. But the the green light swinging the old one is going to tell you that the brown green lacewing or brown lacewing does not have an egg on the on the little whisker. It's a will be attached to the surface of the leaf of the door looks totally different. It looks about the same size will be harder to see.

Obviously, this is a great beneficial that you never want to hurt. You want to make sure that they're active in the garden there are several hundred species of broken and lost and ignorant wasp they're very similar. Like do they operate on different plants but they both do the same thing. They control a parasitize pest insects and what they do is they'll parasitize aphids, for example, you see those are aphids that are all dead. And you say they're all bloated and they're the little exit holes, the little hatch. That's where the young recanted came out.

That's the exit hole. But all those iPads were taken care about it. beautiful little wash. That doesn't sting By the way, you don't have to worry about that part of it. But this is another way that recon ID kills. It'll lay its eggs in the caterpillar. That's a past and then the the PP will form outside of the caterpillar.

But in all of these cases, I'm going to show you the caterpillar is gone. There's no worry about the caterpillar anymore. You see the PP in this case are actually attached to the green caterpillar. This kills this controls the caterpillar kills him and keeps these little beneficial wasps moving around. You see the green Caterpillar very unusual and down there and a little bit different look, wanted you to see these. So whenever you you see this in the garden, you don't kill the caterpillar because you're going to kill all these beneficial wasps as well.

And some of them are very tiny like gnats, and some are large, almost like a large red wasp. All of them recon IDs, or ignorant England last have a little bit longer over positive and they actually can stab the depositor into tree bark and go down deep in the tree bark to lay their eggs to kill things like pine beetles and things that are inside of trees. So these these recon Watson ignorant walls are very versatile. You can say just a little bit dira style they all they all handle the killing of caterpillars in a little bit different way. Now this guy is great. This is one of the assassin bugs.

100% Beneficial you don't want to grab one and play with it too much because they won't attack you unless you do play with them. They think you're about to hurt them. They'll use this sword of a mouthpiece to stab you. It's not poisonous or toxic in any way oh just hurt. But this is a wonderful beneficial. This is the giant wheel bug assassin bug in the name for the part they're on the back, but they kill all sorts of stink bugs and caterpillars and past in the garden are just fascinating to watch.

This is another assassin bug a young one. You can always tell the assassin bugs that are different than stink bugs their past. They both have the mouth part that they stab into things. But the stink bug the past has a long snout and it folds back all the way to its back legs. The good guys the The assassin bugs, their mouthpiece folds back just to the front legs and it's thicker and stouter knowers It's a weapon and it's there mediators like kill the insects the plant eaters the past theirs are long and thinner and fold back all the way to their back legs like do look for similar other than that. Flies everybody thinks flies are past well not all of them are there's some flies are wonderful beneficials this is one of my favorites because there's so pretty.

It's called the long legged fly. And it does have real long legs as beautiful iridescent color, either blue or green. And it's a predator it it eats pests, insects, small pest insects in the garden is very effective. Another parasite is the kind of fly the Taconic flowers very distinctive, easy for you to tell because he's going to have usually kind of hairy back in and also to Some eyes that are very large and very dramatically colored, different colors to the keychain is there you see two different ones there. They are not harmful in any way they don't spread any diseases they are beneficial. And you'll see him around on flowering plants a lot when you start thinking about insects a little more than you have maybe.

And you look at butterflies and honey bees and hover flies and all these different pollinators their own plants that are working the flowers and not buzz going on. And and by the way, even the stinging insects the last and the bees, when they're harvesting when they're out there doing their work harvesting on a plant that you can bump into 99.9% of the time, they'll just fly off and go somewhere else. They will not sting you. They're not aggressive when they're foraging. But these these can't sting at all the tech kind of flies. Another fly that's very important is this one The black soldier fly.

This one is the adult of these awful looking worms that grow in wet compost. The the larvae of the black soldier fly is a is a maggot that helps break down wet compost you can grow them on purpose if you want to raise them for the for bite for chickens or for fish or for fishing or for anything like that if you want to cellulose source the, the worm is easy to grow, take the take the wet scraps from your kitchen, put it in a metal container so that the moisture stays in the container. And if you throw some dog or cat droppings in also, they will explode and you'll have more of them than you can even believe they're not harmful. They don't cause any problems at all. They're just part of a beneficial insect. Another fly that's beneficial The damsel fly.

Damselflies are a little bit different than dragonflies which are also extremely beneficial because they control a lot of past they control mosquitoes to a great degree they control a lot of no seams and they're just beautiful to look at the way you tell the difference. damsel fly has wings folded together, down its back and the dragonflies go straight out. That's the only basic difference. You'll see all kinds of colors. Some are very gentle and even friendly as you can see there are a lot of times be around the pool and dragonflies will land on you the damsel flowers will sometimes as well. beneficial fly again this is the hover fly is a good pollinator a great pollinator and it also has a larva that eats small pest insects again, just nothing but beneficial.

A lot of people see it It's last Ruby in one sprint. And if they do that they've they've hurt their garden and their Pest Control tremendously. Another shot of a hover fly or surfeited flies another name for this just wonderful beneficial that's on the flower of a crape myrtle. So it's a pretty small insect. And then the guys running around the ground lot of people think, Oh, it's a bug, we got to kill it. Well, it's not a bug.

For one thing, a true bug, like stink bugs. This is a beetle that has the wind down the middle, and the halves of the covering open in the wings come out. The the true bugs are the ones that have the crisscross pattern on the back and are like stink bugs. But this is one of the beneficial beetles. This is ground lay run around the ground in the past. They don't eat plants.

So we've either got plant eaters, the vegetarians, or we got meat eaters. The meat eaters are the good guys and plant eaters are the past ones that hurt our plants. But that's a ground beetle and a very beneficial beetle. This one is even better. It's called the caterpillar hunter has some other common names as well, but it's a ground beetle that attacks and kills various caterpillars. That's its favorite dot and the caterpillars it kills are primarily past beautiful coloring really an interesting part of the garden.

Wasps are all beneficial. Everyone our people are afraid of loss just like they are spiders. This is one that will stain you. This is the paper last This is the one that forms the the NASA under the eaves of houses and that kind of thing. They rarely will seeing you though, unless they feel like you are a threat to their nest to they're young. If they're out foraging, they won't bother you.

And they're good pollinators for one thing and so cases, but the other thing is they also kill past. worms in trees are a very good control. These are beneficial also all loss, again are beneficial, but this is one you need to be really careful on if you have Hornets. In general, they are dangerous. They're dangerous for people to be around because they're aggressive. They'll come after you and they'll come after you in groups.

This one we have in Texas and I'm sure it exists. Well, no, it exists in a lot of places too. It's called the Tet true Texas Yellow Jacket forms nasty in the ground or sometimes above ground beautiful NASS beautiful Hornet, typical Hornet looking nest, but they are the most aggressive of the stinging insects that I've ever been around. So if you have them and you can locate where the nest is in the ground, it is one that you need to control. On the other hand, they will control point of view Like this tent caterpillar. And by the way to control a hornet's nest in the ground, you don't need toxic chemicals Spinoza it is a strong thing as you need to use ever and you can generally kill them with one of the essential oils like a century of mixed with water and poured into the mayor.

You can also use something as simple as lemon joy, soap and water and kill insects in hives in the ground. We'll talk about controlling the caterpillars more later, but I wanted to continue on the wash. This is a big loss. So the largest one you'll see in the garden. It scares people because it flies around about two and a half feet off the ground, very menacingly. And it is simply doing that to protect its nest in the ground.

But this one won't sting. This one is not aggressive. This one won't attack you. This one is the cicada killer. It kills cicadas and takes him back to the NASS to feed to its young. It's important for biodiversity in the soil, and just, you know, the natural control of things in the garden without the cicada killer, you'd probably have so many cicadas that there would be damage to the trees, they do a little bit of damage, but the cicada killers, keep them under control.

So the damage is kept to a minimum and you don't have to worry about it. Another loss that's extremely helpful is one that people don't like and they make some masks in the garage and on the eaves of the house and so forth and it's the dud dirt or mud Dogra. The reason they're beneficial is they kill insects. They don't eat plants, and the mud dobbers favorite food if you broke open one of those and looked at what was inside there. Chances are very high that most of the dead insects would be blackballed. widow spiders.

So it's extremely beneficial to control one of the dangerous spiders. Caterpillar is of all kinds can be controlled with the beneficial nematodes but there's they've got so much interest that I tend to leave them. You see this one that's only a, an almond verbena, and it's eating a little bit of foliage but it's almost as interesting as the plant is itself so I tend to leave them along. Not only are they beautiful, but some of the caterpillars that eat parsley and, and dill and phenol and things like that grow up to be gorgeous butterflies like the swallowtail so allowing some of those caterpillars to stay around in the garden and controlling some of the others is a good thing to do. Even some of the moms survive grow up to be beautiful, interesting. insects in the garden.

Even though the caterpillars can do some damage. These are moth adults again that are just beautiful to look at. These are actually the adults of some of the big green caterpillars that you'll find in your tomatoes and your vegetable garden. So you've got the interest of the great little green Caterpillar that are so big you can if you need to get rid of them, you can just pull them off by hand. You really don't need a lot of spraying or anything. And if they do live, they create these beautiful adults to see in the garden.

This Caterpillar, one of the best it's one I have every year in my garden on my passion vans. It's the golf fritillary caterpillar. The adults are the beautiful golden golf fritillary and they'll eat a lot of the foliage. They'll do a little damage to the vine but generally not a whole lot. The vine grows right back and you have all the wonderful butterflies in the garden. Now all Spiders are beneficial.

All of them. There's two that are dangerous, very dangerous, but all of them are beneficial. They all control pests, and most of them are not harmful at all. They won't sting you. They won't bite you. They're, they're nothing but great interest in the garden.

This is our DLP. This is the garden spider, one of the largest in the garden. They make great big webs and sometimes that's a little bit of a problem because they'll sometimes build them right in in an opening of a door or a gateway or something in the garden. And they have to be worked around. But this this is the landing strip they've created there for the moth to come into land be attracted in for the kill or the grasshopper or whatever it is. grasshoppers come in all sizes, all colors, and they're all beneficial.

And some of the garden spiders like that create these gorgeous webs as well as help with The control of insects like you see there are the garden spiders. taken care of a grasshopper, what they do is they'll sting and paralyze the grasshopper the ringing in wrap it up with their web and then they'll slowly kill it feed it to their young or eat it themselves later. Now the shot of the cicada killer. And the cicada again very beneficial was these really interesting little barrels or the eggs of actually a pass in one way, but one of those paths that's helping you with something. These are the eggs of the Harlequin bug, beautiful bugs. And when you see those eggs, and especially when you see the adults that came from those eggs, you know that you have some vegetables in your vegetable garden.

They're bolting there. At the end of their season, they've they're stressed they're they've gone as far as they're going to go. And so it really doesn't make sense to do anything but do what the bug is trying to do and that's take out the plants and put the new plant in where the season is better for that plant. This is a stinkbug myth. It's a good stigma guy is one of the real beneficials that's called broke amenia or tree stinkbug. doesn't eat plants.

That stink bug eats other insects. And it does it by stabbing. This is a little bit different one but this is another stinkbug that's beneficial. And you can see what it does stabs the if it sucks the juices out. Dan doesn't eat plants, nothing but beneficial. Now another great control of insects is just to allow nature to work stop found Stop messing it up.

And that means the birds, the lizards, the frogs, the toes that we talked about earlier, but also bats for some reason, kind of like wasp and spiders and snakes to a degree. They're all beneficial. The snakes help you with rodent control. And even the dangerous ones are never aggressive unless you stumble into them or you're aggressive with them. So even in that case, landing V is the good thing to do. But bats are also in that category.

Bats are extremely helpful with mosquito control much more so than the famous purple martins now love purple martins. They're beautiful birds love their song, love to have him around, but they are far less a percentage of mosquitoes in their diet compared to bats. Bats are our friends there. not dangerous, they won't land on you and bite your neck and give you rabies and I should be encouraged that houses can be put up. But just know allowing the natural bat populations in communities is something that should be done. I took the shot in San Antonio, Bracken cave, it's the largest collection of mammals in one place on Earth.

The number of millions of bats in this cave is just incredible. It's fun to watch. If you ever get a chance to do it. You can learn more information about all our friends, the insects in my book, mapping back in my book, The Texas bug book, we will cover quite a bit more about insects, especially the control techniques that I recommend in our next chapter. It'll be part two, chapter eight. For more information about everything that we talked about here, of course, you can go to Texas, organic research.

Center.org I'm Howard Garrett the dirt doctor and I look forward to being with you next