Posted by lucilletorridon | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 21st May 2020
Hello 2D
I know that you know all about the importance of birds and bees but do you know about any other creatures? One of my favourite garden heroes is the ladybird. Not only are they very beautiful to look at but they do an important job. Most ladybirds are carnivorous and they particularly enjoy aphids. Aphids are small insects that often collect on new shoots at this time of year. They squeeze out a liquid called honey dew. Ants like to collect this and will ‘farm’ the aphids like farmers keep cows! Unfortunately the honey dew can damage plants and this is where the ladybirds come in. The adults and their larvae can eat 50 aphids a day. This spring I saw quite a few aphids on my plants so I bought some ladybird larvae and put them on the plants. They were very tiny but now there are hardly any aphids left. Here are some photos.
Can you see the ladybird larvae?
Why don’t you see how many different kinds of ladybird you can spot? Some are yellow or orange, or even black, and different kinds have different numbers of spots. Let me know how you get on.