Garden Bugs
When I moved here there was a terrible problem with aphids in the garden. My tomato plants were infested with the little creatures and I didn’t know what to do besides spray with insecticide. Being the hippie that I am makes me uncomfortable spraying poisons on my food. What could I do?
Alas the answer seemed to jump out at me the next time I went to a local nursery: we need more bugs! This time I could combat those little buggers with an army of praying mantises. “They’re ferocious eaters” the clerk said to me, “these eggs contain hundreds of mantises, they’ll get rid of your problem.”
My mom was skeptical.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to let loose hundreds of praying mantises into the neighborhood? What’s going to keep them from going to the neighbors’ houses?”
“Why not?” I responded, “they probably have some insect problems too.”
So we bought the mantis eggs and put them out in the garden as per the instructions. When the eggs finally broke open there were gazillions of praying mantises everywhere. They were getting eaten by spiders, chased by the cat, and accidentally stepped on.
“Look! They’re not eating the aphids at all. We paid good money to feed the spiders” my mom balked.
After a few hours, few of the mantises could be found anymore. As I went in for the night, I began to think that maybe it wouldn’t work after all.
A few weeks later however, I noticed that there weren’t nearly as many aphids in the yard. It was amazing! The mantises seemed to have done their job while they remained unseen all the while.
I haven’t had an insect problem since I put those eggs in the garden nearly 5 years ago. Amazingly, in all that time I have yet to see a mantis around the yard; until today. Today I found another one of those tiny mantises on my porch. It was about the size of the first ones to break through those eggs. It seems that they’ve been able to survive and breed to continue to stalk my garden for all those nasty bugs of mine.