Insects Ideas, Tips & Guides

National Nest Box Week starts tomorrow. This annual event encourages us to head out and hang up a new nest box, so that our favourite garden birds have somewhere to raise a family. It’s one thing that may help slow their decline.

If you’re looking for a light-hearted giggle, make a beeline for this hive of bee puns and bee jokes!

Two researchers from the University of Central Florida – Kevin Cannon and Daniel Britt – have been looking at how a Martian colony might feed itself. Although NASA has been growing some food on the International Space Station, its goal is to supplement the vitamins and minerals in a standard astronaut diet and to improve crew morale – it’s not about making a space station, or a colony, self-sufficient.

Today marks the 45th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing, which seems like a good time to take the next step on our space adventure. You choose the topic of bees in space, so here we go!

Now that the arbor is up, I need to think about surrounding it with plants. I have climbing achocha and mashua which might (hopefully) provide some shade. Once you’ve eliminated the possibility of heat stroke, you’re left with that other perennial summer problem – pests. How do you stop bugs great and small from bugging you, or committing suicide in the jug of Pimms?

As gardeners, we’re all familiar with finding caterpillars in the cabbages, but we’re also adept at removing them before we cook up our feasts (or, in my case, feeding the whole lot to the chickens). But what if we didn’t? There are plenty of cultures around the world in which insects provide a valuable source of protein, and even in the Western world our food processing systems don’t guarantee us insect-free food, so we’re all eating them unwittingly anyway. (Although, apparently, the idea that we eat spiders in our sleep is an urban legend.)

Philip Donkersley, Lancaster University

For the last couple of years, two dwarf buddleja ‘Buzz’ bushes have been attracting butterflies into my front garden. This year, they’re gone. Removing them was not a decision I took lightly, but I wanted that space for fruit. However, insect populations are crashing, and since we and the rest of the ecosystem rely on them, it’s time to take their welfare seriously. Creating a butterfly garden is easier than you think, and even a kitchen garden can attract butterflies and other insects. The best place to start is with the way you garden – ditch the pesticides and start growing organically (when you poison ‘bad’ insects you wipe out the good guys, too) and leave the peat in the ground where it is a valuable wildlife habitat. Peat-free composts have improved by leaps and bounds over the last few years, and there’s no reason to use peat in a garden.

I wilt faster than my plants in the heat, so I haven’t been spending much time in the garden during this heatwave. Most nights we get the hosepipe out and water, to stop plants shrivelling from drought. We haven’t had any significant rain in weeks, and there’s none forecast (although we might be treated to a light shower on Friday!). The weeds are thriving without water, though – how do they manage that?

“Bugging in” is a term that Preppers use to describe sheltering in place – staying at home during a potentially threatening situation. It’s the opposite of “bugging out”, where you grab your pre-packed bag of essentials and leave home to find a more secure location to weather the storm. 

Earlier this month, the Met Office announced that its weather radar was picking up something other than rain clouds – swarms of flying ants.

My in-laws visited yesterday to share a cup of tea and a homemade muffin in the garden. My father-in-law asked me what my philosophy on weeding was, as he “knows I won’t spray them.” But he wasn’t really interested, he was just saying that he thought my garden was weedy and he didn’t approve. It’s the second time he has made a similar comment this year.

A few years ago, a pair of New York artists Heidi Neilson and Douglas Paulson started a fun project called “Menu for Mars“, aiming to figure out what astronauts might eat on Mars. Every month for a year, the Menu for Mars Supper Club met at a New York restaurant, “gathering recommendations, suggestions and opinions from restaurateurs about what food they would prepare on Mars”. During these research missions, the group hosted a wide range of experts and learned about related topics such as horticulture and composting, nutrition and culinary anthropology. Mission 3, the Meal Replacement Picnic, was particularly gruelling. They sampled an array of meal replacement products and found most of them to be barely edible (and certainly not a replacement for a genuine meal). Afterwards, they had to send someone to get emergency sandwiches.

Ah… summer. When the days are long and the sun is relentless and I wish I was on the International Space Station (ISS), which has a space-age climate control system to keep it nice and comfy. 

Header image: Springtails (Fasciosminthurus quinquefasciatus) are found in any damp soil. Andy Murray/chaosofdelight.org, CC BY-NC-ND

Charley Eiseman and Noah Charney’s 2010 book is full of photos of all the oddball things you see outside (if you stop long enough to notice!): egg cases and cocoons and all kinds of webs; folded and curled-up leaves as if something’s hidden inside (it is!); and all manner of bumps, lumps, notches, and holes in foliage, bark, you name it. Even tiny previously unexplained pattern in the sand…and soil…a.k.a. tracks and signs of insects.“I’ve always been interested in everything around me,” says Charley, whose Master’s degree is from the University of Vermont’s field naturalist program. “Then someone gave me a digital camera right after I graduated from college, so I started paying closer attention to the little things.  And then I started wishing I had a field guide to tell me what all these signs left by insects and other invertebrates were—but it just didn’t seem to exist.”Charley and Noah took it upon themselves to create that guide, in “Tracks and Sign of Insect

He also publishes what is “famously the world’s latest seed catalog” to drop each year, but he’s making no excuses. While other companies are sending out theirs, the Mortons are harvesting the seed those companies ordered from Wild Garden. I’ve gleaned a few of Morton’s plant lessons: about calendula, beneficial insects, and how home gardeners wanting to know just which lettuce to grow can set up their very own seed trial.FRANK MORTON, whose certified-organic Wild Garden Seed farmland is in Philomath, Oregon, grew salad for 18 years for restaurants, “and that’s when I did my breeding,” he recalls. “I had thousands of seeds and plants going and suddenly there was a red one—an accidental cross between a red Romaine and a green oakleaf. But when I saved its seed, I didn’t get red ones, but traits from both parents.”A lettuce breeder was born.“Basically I learned from the lettuce where new varieties come from.”

“I’m just a nurse interested in the world, not a biologist,” said Teresa in her kind note to me. “And yet,” she said, “I found it very compelling and full of ancient, beautiful illustrations.”Dr. Michael Engel is the author of “Innumerable Insects: The Story of the Most Diverse and Myriad Animals on Earth,” lav

I have the pleasure of interviewing entomologists and ecologists pretty regularly on my public radio program and podcast, and in 2018 a few conversations touched on my question about what insects are after.The year ends in my northern garden with outdoor insect activity at its low point, but I’ve nevertheless been thinking of them, and of some key takeaways from interviews this past year about “the little things that run the world,” as Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson famously called insects and other invertebrates. I rounded

Dr. David Shetlar (below left) is a professor of urban landscape entomology at Ohio State. With Dr. Whitney Cranshaw of Colorado State (below right), author of the original 2004 edition of “Garden Insects,” he created the second volume, and joined me to explain who’s in the updated version and why, and how we can get to know them better.Plus: Enter to win a copy of the new “Garden Insects of North America” by commenting in the box at the very bottom of the page.garden insects, with dr. david shetlarQ. What an undertaking this must have been. How long was this collaboration?A. Well, it was kind of interesting, Whitney and

Check out these Master Gardener’s Tricks to Improve Beneficial Insects in Garden! Discover proven techniques from seasoned gardeners to create a thriving ecosystem that supports beneficial insects and promotes a healthy, vibrant garden.

Scale is an umbrella term used to identify nearly 8,000 varieties of wingless, sucking insect species in the order Hemiptera.One of the more common garden pests, these minute org

Insects have one of the most important ecological roles in nature, but bites from mosquitoes, gnats, flies, and no-see-ums are highly annoying. To prevent their itchy and painful punctures, many people slather themselves in chemical insect spray (DEET, one of the worst offenders, is neurotoxic and has been detected in groundwater).They don't realize that they can repel bugs—at least partially—using the power of plants.

Check out our list of the Most Useful and Beneficial Garden Insects You Should Avoid Killing. They help pollinate flowers and also keep other pests at bay.

Tired of insects hovering around your home and gardens? Don’t worry! You can keep them at bay without the use of any chemicals by growing these Bug Repellant Plants. 

Bird feeders and insect hotels and nest boxes are generally rather utilitarian or rustic, but the new range from prezzybox.com are positively sculptural and would look great in a contemporary urban setting.  Group them together on a wall and they will be as much a work of art as a lure for birds and beneficial insects.  They are £24.95 each. ..

Have you ever noticed that you just can’t keep the bugs off certain types of plants in your garden?In the same way that Goldfish crackers look more appe

It’s late summer here, and my yard is alive with insects. Wasps and bees dip in and out of daylily blossoms, butterflies flutter between the zinnias, and spiders have made an intricate network of webs among the marigolds.I’m watching something interesting, as I sit and enjoy my surroundings.

I’ve always thought that if I can entice insects and wildlife into my garden, then well… I’m doing something right;

When insects attack your kale plants, you’ll want to fight back. Fortunately, there are natural ways to kill the many different insect pests that plague these greens.Once I’ve planted my kale and watched the leav

What lures a potential mate? While it may be looks and charm in humans, for insects, it is typically a seductive chemical.You may have heard of pheromones – chemical attr