Planting ladybirds

[desperance]

I am; I am growing ladybirds. I confess, you don't actually plant them. But my friend Mary from Barter Books has sent me a Ladybird Breeding Kit, and I have released the little larvae into their little tupperware container and they are scuttling about all over and chowing down on their food, and in thirty days I hope they will be fully-fledged (well, no, not fledged, but you know what I mean) ladybirds and chowing down on my greenfly. I'll keep you informed.

Comments

[hamadryad11.livejournal.com]

Where are the ladybirds from, do you know? A few years ago, you could get all kinds of kits to grow them here, in order to control aphids. The only problem was that they were an Asian species, and they started to crowd out native species'. Plus, they bite!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Eww, biting ladybirds? That is bad. And alien is badder. Happily, these are adalia bipunctata (which I guess will mean two-spotted, he murmured, multilingually) and native to the UK, hurrah. All conscience salved.

[hamadryad11.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's good. Very sensible of them to make kits with native species. I wish they'd had that kind of good sense here.

[readwrite.livejournal.com]

Why are you waiting? Ladybugs are predacious on aphids in both the adult and the larval stage.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I know, it says so, right here - but it's a Kit, and it comes with Instructions, and I'm a good boy, me. I tend to follow recipes, too, first time through. So I'll do what they tell me, and see what results; and next year, maybe I'll improvise...

But thank you for the heads-up.