Who doesn’t love ladybugs?
These easily recognizable, friendly little insects are yellow, orange, or scarlet and have small black spots on their wings.
The benefits of having ladybugs in your garden include being able to cut back on pesticides and ridding your flower beds of aphids and other insect pests.
Also known as lady beetles or ladybirds, the ladybug can be your best friend as a gardener and attracting them into your yard or garden will add to the beauty and joy of making your garden unique.
But if you want to attract ladybugs to your garden, you’ll have to do a few things first to start your own successful ladybug garden.
Read on to learn how to get ladybugs to love your garden.
You can purchase ladybugs online or at a local nursery and release them to start a ladybug garden.
How to Identify Ladybugs
The ladybird has an oval body and the color can vary from yellow to orange or bright red. The black spots on the wing covers also vary in number and size and a few species, such as the twice stabbed lady beetle are even solid black.
Ladybug larvae are not so easy to recognize, but have six legs and are usually blue-black with orange spots. Learn to spot the larvae so you do not accidentally spray them with insecticide or crush them thinking they might be aphid or other insect larvae.
Lady beetles like to feed primarily on soft-body and scale insects like aphids; a ladybug can eat as many as five-thousand aphids during its lifespan. A female may lay fifty to three-hundred eggs at a time, which take three to five days to hatch. Larvae take about two to three weeks before pupating into adult ladybugs.
Typically we think of ladybugs as being orange or red, but yellow or black species can also be found in some gardens, depending your climate and location.
Besides eating aphids, lady beetles are depend on pollen as a food source and seek certain types of flowering plants, including dill, cilantro, yarrow, wild carrot, angelica, cosmos, geraniums and dandelions.
So, to create your ladybug garden, you will want to research these plants further and be sure to plant them in your garden if you don’t have them already!
Other methods you can use to attract ladybugs include cutting back or ceasing the use of insecticides in your garden. By leaving aphids, you not only provide the ladybug population with the food source upon which it thrives, but you also avoid killing any of the larvae. Remember that the ladybugs will provide a natural check against the aphids, keeping them under control.
What you will need to start your ladybug garden:
- Garden Hose
- Nozzles and attachments
- Ladybugs
- Flowering Plants (see above for some favorite species)
Instructions for starting your ladybug garden:
- You can buy ladybugs at your local nursery or online. This will help to get your ladybug population established. Research has proven that ladybugs reared indoors can not survive when released outdoors, so be sure you buy wild ladybugs collected from the outdoors only.
- Keep your ladybugs moist with a few drops of water and place them in your refrigerator vegetable crisper until you release them. This will also slow them down a bit since they will be cooler.
- In the afternoon or early evening, water your garden well in preparation; this gives them much needed hydration and helps them stick better to the plants. Its best to release your ladybugs after the sun sets to help prevent birds from eating them before they are able to settle into your garden.
- After resting overnight and re-hydrating a bit, your ladybugs will be ready to start eating those aphids. If you have any plants that are infested with the aphids, place a bit of netting over the plants and let some of your ladybugs loose under it, where they will happily gobble up those pests!
While ladybugs eat mainly aphids and scale insects, they also depend on pollen as a food source.
Ladybug Facts
- The black spots on their wings fade as they age
- Ladybug wings move very quickly, like a hummingbird’s, as much as 85 times per second in flight
- A ladybug can live for up to three years
- The male ladybug is smaller than the female
- Long ago, doctors used mashed-up ladybugs to cure toothaches
- The Swiss call ladybugs “Good God’s Little Fairy”
- The Ladybug is the state insect in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Delaware, Tennessee and Ohio
Kendra
June 26, 2008
WOW now i can do this to my ladybug garden!!!
July 26, 2008
I’ve followed all these steps. I have been putting out 15-20 ladybugs every evening for a week, and the only thing thriving is my aphid population.
I see just a couple of ladybugs, and I have no idea where the rest have gone to.
I’ve followed the guidelines to a ‘t’, keeping the plants moist, and only releasing the ladybugs after sundown. There should be plenty of aphids for them to feed on, and there’s also some cilantro nearby.
Today I even took a couple of ladybugs and put them directly on the stalk of my calendula that is overflowing with aphids. The ladybugs just walked right over them, not gobbling up any! Are they not hungry???
My flowers are heading for the garbage bin very soon…
September 22, 2008
If you are providing the right conditions the adults will find each other and breed. The young ladybugs look pretty scary but are avid aphid eaters.
November 28, 2008
Wow ladybugs are my favorite insect ,and i love them the most they are so pretty and they eat bad bugs such as aphids.
March 21, 2009
I wish I could get rid of about 10,000 lady bugs. They invade my garage / woodshop every fall. Whenever the temp gets up to 75 they start flying all over the place. If they get excited like when I take a shop vac after them, they start letting off a big stink.
April 7, 2009
this is soooooo coooooooooooooooooooooool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
April 16, 2009
every year for the last 3 years my yard has 100’s of ladybugs…I would like to know why?it’s always in the spring..in the leaves the don’t get collected.
April 19, 2009
wow you people that dont have any of these ladybugs should move to wisconsin we have them by the thousands unless your using obama math we have them by the trillions lol but to be honest our yearly highlight with these beatles is sucking them up in the shop vac every spring as they migrate to our sunny windows then taking them all outside dumping them out as we procede to pour gasoline on them and light the great lil beatles on fire so anyone that wants to save these special lil beatles just send us a note we will send a shopvac full of them to you postage free good luck to you ladybug lovers
April 20, 2009
I’m no ladybug lover but you’re sick Wayne! You were abused weren’t you?
What if GOD sucked up your little Wisconian ass with his shop vac then dumped you out and torched you.
You need help man !
April 21, 2009
I think Wayne made that story up because he has nothing better to do with his time!
April 22, 2009
[...] composter here How to start a ladybug garden here Garden Nerds here Green for your home here This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 [...]
April 24, 2009
so is it true
April 25, 2009
I am planning to start a school garden on the honor of Orville Wright so how would I refrigerate the little bugs and how would I make sure their all right. Is it necessary to put them in the fridge.
May 3, 2009
Thank you! I’m so glad I know how to start a ladybug garden.
May 30, 2009
Wayne, your attempts at humor are about as funny as your treatment of ladybugs. What are you thinking?! Get a life. And save those of the ladybugs: take your shop vac to your local garden shop.
June 4, 2009
omg i love ladybirds!!! this is awesome!!! i am in a community garden which is infested by aphids & of course ladybeetles. in my plot my friend & i are making a ludybug sanctuary so the ladybug haters cant touch them. this page rocks & totally helps. oh & i agree, wayne, your a sicko!!!!
June 19, 2009
i wish i had a ladybug invasion to go with my aphid invasion. i’ll pay for postage if anyone wants to send some my way…. please….!
July 9, 2009
stop ragging on Wayne. He’s a kind hearted fellow…myself on the other hand, i shop vac them, then drown them in ammonia. after that, i torch them, but not with gasoline. i prefer lighter fluid.
July 9, 2009
For those of you that don’t understand the reason for the poor treatment of ladybugs by some Wisconsinites (or “Sconnies”) realize that the imported Asian Ladybug has become quite a pest out here. Not only do they infest crawlspaces and bite people, they stink when they are disturbed. It is quite difficult to tell the difference between the good ones and the stinky bad ones.
July 15, 2009
yes the asian ladybettles are bad nothing like the red ones.they invade my home fall and spring, they bite you and stink
July 20, 2009
Ladybirds fly -and they will regardless of the plants you have in your garden. All you can do is provide the environment they like and then keep an eye on your plants, they will drop in and feast as the mood suits them, if you have a yummy garden they may stay awhile otherwise they will just buzz-off. I have a Hibiscus tree hedge that turns into a ladybird nursary every May, they stay for a few weeks and then they are gone!
July 27, 2009
aphids are evil!!!.. ladybuggz are brilliant lil aphid gobbling blessings 2 the garden!!…i have an aphid infestation.. they took over practicly over night!!!…,, i had a whole bunch of ladybugs around,, but since the aphids popped up,, the ladybugs are m.i.a,,, i think the aphids teamed up n killed them..
… ive got some chinese miantids about to hatch, n when there little, they luv aphids,, so im hoping thatl help,,, but i miss my ladybugs… hoping the tips on here will help me get them back 2 my garden. 
… oi,, n wayne,,, ehemmm…. u suk,,
August 11, 2009
I’m with Wayne, eva and JwRN. I’m in Wisconsin too. You all can have our ladybugs/Asian beetles. This fall no matter what it takes we’re going to kill them all before they get into the house. We tired of their smell and being bit by them. And there are so many that they’ve flown into our food while we are eating. They taste as bad as they smell.
August 26, 2009
Just a note for those of you who have an aphid problem, even with ladybugs in the garden….. Get rid of the ants, and the aphid population will go down too. Ants ‘farm’ aphids as they ‘milk’ them for their juice. The ants will protect the aphids, move them around, and hide them away. So the poor ladybugs are outnumbered, and in danger. You need a two prong approach. Kill off the ants (sprinkle semolina or maize meal around the garden – the ants carry it back to the queen, she eats it, can’t digest it, swells up and pops. Gruesome, but effective and strikes at the heart of the nest. Also organic), and let your ladybugs feast. You will have a controlled aphid population in no time.
August 28, 2009
how can get so much bug
October 19, 2009
This is happening to me also, they are everywhere. They also seem to bite if you swat at them. They are more orange or brown in color. Is this something different????????
October 20, 2009
I came home from work yesterday and these creatures were ALL over the front of my house – they’re everywhere – between the screens & windows, in my basement and of course when I opened the door they let themselves in. Anybody got any ideas on how to get rid of them – looked at my neighbors houses and nothing. Help
October 21, 2009
I’ve been invaded as well. They are everywhere, and by the thousands! Many of the children in my school district have reported the same phenomenon… what is going on? And how can I convince them to move along? I love lady bugs- but not when my entire house is covered! My hens won’t touch them due to the smell/taste…
I don’t want to harm them, but I also don’t want them taking over my home!
October 22, 2009
yup, it’s that time of year here. Our house is covered completely, too(central NY)….today being the peak so far.
October 27, 2009
I would love to have some of your free ladybugs. I need them to keep the aphids out of my garden here in California. Plese call me if you want to send some. (707)396-9123
October 31, 2009
Well, I must say! (Red) Ladybugs are beautiful creatures, yet they can become a pest if they are all over the place. In order to avoid hurting the ladybugs yet getting rid of them at the same time, I would suck them up in a light vacuum cleaner. Then I would give them to a ladybug sanctuary, a friend who wants them, or set them free in a park. I personally ♥love♥ ladybugs myself, considering there are very few here in Arizona.
November 9, 2009
Asian Ladybug is the answer. And I have themcoming from my sons room window. They were all over blinds too. At least over one hundred of them are now in a bug container, I keeping them hydrated. I I will set them free in the spring.