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Garden Advice

Beneficial Insects: Fireflies

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Let’s talk about fireflies! These beautiful insects enamor kids and adults alike. It’s hard not to love how they light up the night, but there’s more to fireflies than beauty! They are wonderful for gardens. They’re native predators that feed on common garden pests like slugs and snails. Keep reading to learn about some firefly species you might see, their lifecycle and benefits, and how to attract them to your garden. 

Firefly Species of the Southeastern United States

The name firefly doesn’t refer to a single species. There are over 2,000 species of fireflies worldwide, and about 175 are native to North America! Here are some of the incredible firefly species you might see if you live in our region, the Southeastern United States:

  • The Common Eastern Firefly or Big Dipper Firefly (Photinus pyralis)
    Males produce a single sustained yellow light, often in a J-shaped flight trajectory.
  • The Blue Ghost (Phausis reticulata)
    Males glow with a pale blue or green light rather than flashing.
  • The Synchronous Firefly (Photinus carolinus)
    All individuals in an area will display 5 to 8 flashes of yellow light followed by a period of darkness for 8 to 10 seconds.
  • Father Mac’s Firefly or Mr. Macs (Photinus macdermotti)
    Males display two flashes of yellow light about 1 1/2 to 2 seconds apart, followed by 4 to 5 seconds of darkness, then another double flash.
  • The Spring Four-Flasher (Photuris versicolor var. quadrifulgens)

    These fireflies display in spring with a stuttered four-part flash. 

Next time you watch fireflies, see if you can spot any recognizable flash patterns! Of course, there are also many other species of fireflies you can learn to identify. Finding an insect field guide can be helpful (check your local library), or check out resources that the Firefly Atlas has listed.

Blue Ghost Firefly
Aggyrolemnoixytes, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Beyond Beauty: Understanding Fireflies

While you might already want to attract fireflies to your garden just for their looks, there are a few other reasons they’re great to have around.

Fireflies have a four-part lifecycle: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. The entire lifecycle can last two months to three years, depending on the species, with the longest period spent in the larval stage.

Firefly larvae live in moist soil, feeding off slugs, snails, and other soft-bodied insects. They’re an excellent garden ally! All firefly larvae are bioluminescent, which may help ward off predators.

After that stage, they pupate in safe spots like underground, rotting logs, or bark furrows. They overwinter in this stage and emerge in the spring as adult fireflies that light up the skies. Depending on the species, adult fireflies may feed on nectar, pollen, other fireflies or not eat at all.

Not all adult fireflies produce flashes. In those that do, the flash is made by chemicals like luciferase and luciferin, working with other substances in the insect’s body to produce light in the firefly’s lantern organ on their abdomen. 

The flashes, often created by males while flying, are signals to find mates. Different species have different flash patterns and sometimes different colors so that they can find a mate from the correct species.

Thanks to fireflies, scientists have created a test for harmful bacteria like salmonella or E. coli in food products such as milk, soft drinks, and meat. The test contains luciferase and luciferin, which react with any ATP found in bacteria cells (and all living cells). A glowing test means bacteria is present.

How to Encourage Fireflies in Your Garden

Unfortunately, many firefly species are in decline. They have been affected by habitat loss, climate change, and pollution. Now that we have some basic knowledge about the firefly lifecycle, we can consider what would make our gardens and yard attractive to them. 

Avoid Pesticides, Herbicides, and Other Chemicals

Some of this goes without saying; obviously, spraying your garden and home with pesticides is detrimental to all the species that live there. Pesticides (even organic ones) don’t discriminate between good bugs and bad. 

Other chemicals, such as herbicides and fungicides, can also linger in the soil, affecting firefly populations for years to come. Always thoroughly research any product you intend to use in your garden.

Synchronous Fireflies
Firefly Photos by Radim Schreiber; FireflyExperience.org, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Improve Soil Health

Much like your plants, firefly larvae thrive in rich, moist, loose soil with plenty of organic matter. Good soil isn’t built overnight, but there are many free or cheap ways to improve it. Consider adding compost and leaf litter to your garden. You can also use methods like broad forking, no-till gardening, and cover cropping. 

Natural Spaces

Even if you nurture a suitable habitat in your garden, it’s always a good idea to consider keeping some space wild if you have a suitable property. Rotting logs, leaf litter, and weedy native plants may seem unsightly to some but are attractive to our firefly friends and other native species. 

Minimize Outdoor Lighting

Many scientists believe light pollution interferes with firefly mating and probably contributes to their decline. Minimizing outdoor lighting at night can give those in your area a better chance. Plus, it also helps migrating birds!

Consider closing curtains in brightly lit rooms and turning off outdoor lighting when not in use. You may also consider switching to motion detector lighting for the outdoors, which can still help with security and provide automatic light whenever you need it.

Don’t Remove Leaf Litter

Leaf litter provides an essential habitat for fireflies and other beneficial insects. When you rake up leaf litter, you remove organic matter from your soil and rake up firefly larvae!

Leave Riparian Areas Natural

Don’t mow near the edges of ponds, creeks, and rivers any more than you have to. A small patch for access is fine, but mowing the whole thing eliminates habitat and contributes to erosion and water pollution. 

Plant Native Species and Encourage Variety

When possible plant native species to support all kinds of native wildlife and insects. You can also improve the habitat, even in areas where you are growing non-natives, by encouraging diversity. Avoid aggressive invasive plants and monocultures. Instead, opt for a mix of plants with varying heights, textures, and blooms.

Fireflies bring a lot of joy and purpose to your garden. Help them thrive by keeping these practices in mind this season.

Garden Advice

Pests & Pollination: Attract Beneficial Insects

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Last week we discussed strategies for conquering weeds in an organic garden. This week we’re moving on to another chore loathed by natural farmers, gardeners, and growers everywhere, controlling pests. One excellent way to ensure pest populations don’t get out of control is to ensure you have plenty of beneficial insects. When we think of beneficial insects, we often think of pollinators like bees and butterflies, but insects have so much more to offer us, gardeners! Many beneficial insects prey on pests and their eggs and larvae. Learn how to attract beneficial insects to your garden.

A lacewing on a leaf (attract beneficial insects)
Lacewing (Chrysopidae spp.)

What are Beneficial Insects?

Beneficial insects help us in the garden by pollinating plants, feeding on pests, and parasitizing pests. In our area, some of these include:

  • Wheel Bug (Arilus cristatus)
  • Wolf Spider (Lycosidae spp.)
  • Rusty Patched BumbleBee (Bombus affinis)
  • Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes)
  • Carolina Mantis (Stagmomantis Carolina)
  • Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia)
  • Orange Sulfur (Colias eurytheme)
  • Braconid Wasp (Cotesia congregates)
  • Damsel Bugs (Nabidae spp.)
  • Mabel Orchard Orbweaver Spider (Leucauge argyrobapta)
  • Southeastern Blueberry Bee (Habropoda laboriosa)
  • Lacewing (Chrysopidae spp.)
  • Big-Eyed Bug (Geocoris spp.)
  • Blue Orchard Mason Bee (Osmia lignaria)
  • Striped Lynx Spider (Oxyopes salticus)
  • American Copper Butterfly (Lycaena phlaeas Americana)

These are just a fraction of the insect species hard at work in our yards and gardens! Of course, there are beneficial animals too. Birds and bats can also help keep pest populations down and pollinate plants.

Further Reading:

dead leaves (attract beneficial insects)
Dead leaves are excellent habitat for many beneficial insects.

Habitat Features to Attract Beneficial Insects

All these helpful insects need a habitat that provides the essentials of food, water, and shelter, just like we do. 

Don’t Clean Up Too Much

Many beneficial insects need places for themselves or their eggs to overwinter. Blue Orchard Mason Bees, for example, overwinter their eggs in cavities in plants like the hollow stems of flowers or reeds. Depending on the species, Lacewings over winter in their adult or pupa stage in piles of dead leaves or other organic debris. Resisting the urge to keep your garden spotless can provide these insects with better habitat.

Plant a Windbreak

Sometimes, gardeners will plant windbreaks to help with wind-related issues like lodging corn, but few people probably consider that it makes life much easier for beneficial insects. A windbreak or hedgerow can help slow wind through your garden, creating calmer flying conditions for bees, dragonflies, lady beetles, and other flyers.

Provide Water

Especially in the hot dry days of summer, insects need water just like people do. If you have water on your property like a pond or creek you can help keep it full and cool by allowing the banks to grow in trees and shrubs that will shade it. If you don’t have a natural water source, don’t worry you can make an insect waterer! All you need is some sort of clean small trough and stones to place in it. The stones are critical, as insects need an easy way to get down to the water and to climb out. Change the water regularly. 

Avoid Pesticides of Any Kind

Sometimes when we see the organic label we assume something is safe. Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple. Organic pesticides may be much safer for people and often waterways than conventional pesticides. However, both conventional and organic pesticides kill insects and neither of them differentiate between types of insects. If you have something that kills caterpillars to get rid of the cabbage loopers any swallowtail caterpillar that comes into contact with it will be effected too.

Flowers & Plants that Attract Beneficial Insects

Flowers aren’t just for bees and butterflies! Lacewings, parasitic wasps, lady beetles, and other insects use them too. For example, the larval stage of Convergent Lady Beetles feeds on insects, but the adult stage feeds on nectar, pollen, and honeydew. The females need a certain amount of these foods before laying eggs.

Conversely, many species, including bees and butterflies, need plants that aren’t in their flowering stage. For example, the caterpillars of the Black Swallowtail Butterfly will feed on the leaves of carrots, dill, fennel, and parsley.

Selecting Plants & Flowers

While poppies, roses, tulips, and hydrangeas are all stunning flowers that are great for human enjoyment, they may not be a favorite among beneficial insects. Flowers that are native or user-friendly typically will attract and support more beneficial insects.

Native Plants
Native Shrubs
  • Eastern Sweetshrub (Calycanthus floridus)
  • Southern Highbush Blueberry (Vaccinium formosum)
  • Allegheny Serviceberry (Amelanchier laevis)
  • False Indigo Bush (Amorpha fruticosa)
  • American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana)
Native Trees
  • Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis)
  • Sourwood (Oxydendrum arboreum)
  • Tulip Poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera)
  • Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum)
  • Black Cherry (Prunus serotina)

Your local extension agency may also be able to provide more information on native species specifically suited to your area.

User-Friendly Flowers

Generally, beneficial insects find get the most food from a few different types of flowers: those with flat umbels of tiny flowers (looks a bit like a lace umbrella) like Queen Anne’s Lace, those with daisy-like flowers made up of tiny flowers like sunflowers, and those with loose spikes of tube-like flowers like mint.

These are just a few plants beneficial insects love. While it’s still perfectly fine to have and enjoy other flowers and plants, it’s important to plant some that consider our local insects.

Incorporating these strategies into your garden plan can help you attract beneficial insects and have a successful season. Happy growing!

 

 

Garden Advice

Wildlife Friendly Garden: Fall Clean-Up

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This fall, we’ve loved seeing an increased awareness about how pollinators and other beneficial insects are affected by garden clean-up. These creatures overwinter in organic debris such as plant stems, seed pods, and leaves. Overwintering songbirds also utilize this debris for habitat and food sources. 

So do we leave our garden as is in the fall for wildlife? No, we remove some material, leave some, and add some. These autumn chores are essential for the health and productivity of next year’s garden. Here’s what we recommend to keep your garden healthy and give wildlife a helping hand:

Clean up diseased plants.

In the fall, any diseased plant material should be removed from the garden and burnt, buried away from any garden beds, or composted in a well-managed compost pile that reaches at least 140°F. 

Nightshades or members of the Solanaceae family, including peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplants, are common candidates. These plants are affected by fungal diseases such as Alternaria (early blight), late blight, verticillium wilt, and fusarium wilt, which can overwinter in dead plant material.

You should also remove plants like cucumbers and squashes that have been affected by Downey Mildew.

Don’t leave soil bare over the winter. 

If your first frost is still several weeks away, you should be sowing cover crops like clover, Austrian winter peas, or winter rye in open beds. Cover crops prevent erosion, suppress weeds, add organic matter and nutrients to the soil, and provide habitat for beneficial insects, bacteria, and fungi.

However, depending on what zone you’re in, if you haven’t sown any fall cover crops at this point, you may want to use mulch instead. A thick layer of mulch can help provide a winter habitat for beneficial insects, bacteria, and fungi. It also suppresses weeds, slowly adds organic matter as it breaks down, and protects the soil from winter weather. We talked more in-depth about mulch in a previous post, but you can use straw, hay, old leaves, or wood chips.

Leave the leaves!

We’ve been taught that our yards and gardens should look tidy, but there’s nothing wrong with leaving autumn leaves right where they fall. They’ll break down and add organic matter and nutrients to your lawn and garden.

If you have places you want to remove leaves from, such as pathways to your home, there are a couple of great uses for them. You can add them to your compost pile; they’re a great source of carbon. You can also use leaves as an excellent free mulch to protect soil or perennial and overwintering plants like garlic, fruit trees and shrubs, strawberries, rhubarb, or tulips.

Don’t cut back seed-bearing flower heads.

Dead flower stalks are some of our favorite plants to leave standing. A few great choices include sunflowers, echinacea (coneflowers), bee balm (monarda), and rudbeckia (black-eyed Susans). The stems from many species are ideal places for native bees. You might also spot songbirds using them as winter perches and searching them for any leftover seed. They also add a bit of beauty to the winter landscape. Frost-covered seed heads are a lovely morning view. 

Plant more flowers.

Depending on your zone, you may still be able to sneak in a few flower seeds and bulbs. Many native flowers are excellent choices for fall sowing because their seeds are adapted to spending the winter in the soil in our climate. Check out our post, Spring Flowers: Fall Sowing, for a list of flowers that can be fall sown. 

Do cut back pest-infested material.

Another instance where we opt to remove and burn plant material is when it is infested with pests that may overwinter in the material. An excellent example of this is asparagus stalks that were infested with asparagus beetles. After they turn brown and die back in the fall, it’s a good idea to cut them about 2 inches above the soil and burn them. 

Other November odds and ends:

  • Drain the gas from rototillers and other equipment that will sit all winter.
  • Bring in terracotta pots that can crack during freeze and thaws.
  • Drain and store hoses and sprinklers. 
  • Clean and oil garden tools before storing them. This also helps fungal diseases from being transmitted to other garden beds.

As organic gardeners, we strive to work with nature. Following these simple ideas can limit time spent on clean-up, help build healthy soil, and increase the number of birds and beneficial insects in and around our gardens.