Beneficial and Pest Insects: The Good, the Bad, and the Hungry

k 3 of the Hungry Garden series talks about the other hungry species dwelling in your garden – insects! Whether they’re eating your plants – or eating the insects that are eating your plants – insects are fascinating to learn about, even the garden-wreckers.

Learn to observe what lives on your roses, what’s laying eggs on the underside of your tomato leaves, and what insects are lying in ambush for pests. This book will help you tell the helpful bugs from the harmful ones, and walk you through ways to encourage beneficial insects while discouraging the pests and helping you to limit pest damage.

This volume covers a plethora of beneficial insects, including damselflies, lacewings, ladybugs, wheel bugs and assassin bugs, praying mantis, big-eyed bugs, wasps, cicada killers, and leaf-cutter bees. It also has a rouge’s gallery of pest insects: mealybugs, whiteflies, scale, stink bugs, fungus gnats, flea beetles, tomato hornworms, aphids, spotted cucumber beetles, spider mites, thrips, Japanese beetles, squash bugs, grasshoppers, and emerald ash borers. We also have ways you can control pests without harmful chemicals and sprays, and ways to attract your insect friends, create a habitat for beneficial insects, and make them happy in your garden.

Beneficial and Pest Insects is a little handy-dandy manual that walks you through the pest insects that might be in your garden and the beneficial insects that you would like to see more of. Focusing on a plant-positive approach – in which the health of the plants is considered over the random eradication of random insects – this book is a naturalist's/gardener's look at the fascinating and busy world of insects in the garden.