Photo courtesy of clayirving at Flickr.com.
Whatever you’re growing — whether vegetables, herbs, or flowers — it makes sense to set aside a little space in your garden for fennel. This hardy perennial herb is easy to grow in the organic garden, and not only has culinary and medicinal uses, it also happens to be the preferred habitat of those most beneficial of insects, ladybugs.
If you don’t already have sufficient ladybugs in your garden, you can easily attract a population by offering them fennel. Why fennel? Because like other herbs in the wild carrot family (including dill and cilantro), it attracts aphids, which the carnivorous ladybugs prey upon.
While attracting the ladybugs, give them a ladybug loft that provides a place to perch. Place the ladybug house in your garden, even right by the fennel, so they’ll stick around. Still need more ladybugs? Who wouldn’t? Ladybugs are essential in organic pest management. You can order live ladybugs!
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I have a ladybug house but not instruction on it. Do I put cedar greens in it, i seem to rember something about the ladybugs being shipped in cedar leaves? Or was it pine? What do I put in it?