Tag Archives: sustainable agriculture

10 Plants to Attract Beneficial Insects to Your Garden

Many insects play vital roles in helping our gardens grow. Flies, bees, butterflies, and moths pollinate crops while spiders, beetles, mantids, parasitoid wasps, lacewings, and other predators feed on pests. On the soil level, worms, millipedes, and other decomposers help turn organic matter into usable nutrients for your plants.

Attracting some of these insects to your garden can reduce pest pressure, help build healthy soil, and improve yields. Here are ten plants you can grow this season to help attract some of these important insects to your garden:

Buckwheat

Buckwheat

This tasty grain and fantastic green manure crop is also excellent for attracting pollinators and parasitoid wasps. It grows quickly, and both wasps and bees love the flowers! Sowing a patch and have it buzzing with activity when flowers appear in as little as six weeks!

Dara

Dara

This delicate flower is closely related to Queen Anne’s Lace but isn’t as aggressive in the garden. The flower clusters in pink, dark purple, and white attract various pollinators, including tachinid flies that parasitize squash bugs.

Creeping Thyme

Creeping Thyme

Slow-growing at first, Creeping Thyme will eventually form dense mats. This thick ground cover provides excellent shelter and shade for predatory beetles as well as decomposers like millipedes.

Bronze Fennel

Fennel

Fennel has beautiful delicate flowers that attract tiny wasps and other pollinators. Its leaves are also a food source for some swallowtail butterfly caterpillars.

Mint

Mint

Like thyme, mint is a great way to create dense shady areas of foliage that are multi-purpose. You can harvest mint for tea and culinary uses while it provides habitat for decomposers and predatory beetles. The flowers are a favorite with bees.

We’re currently out of stock of mint seed, but you may be able to get a start from a friend. Alternatively, other plants in the mint family that work well include lemon balm or anise-hyssop.

Sweet Alyssum

Sweet Alyssum

Sweet Alyssum forms low, spreading mounds with fragrant, tiny white flowers that are excellent for attracting bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. It’s long-blooming, especially when spent blooms are cut back. It also provides shade and shelter for ground-dwelling beneficial insects.

Echinacea

Echinacea

This native flower can help you attract a variety of butterflies and bees to your garden. It’s also drought-tolerant and medicinal.

Dill

Dill

Like fennel and Dara, dill’s tiny flowers are attractive to many small beneficial insects, including parasitoid wasps, flies, and bees. It will do double-duty when it’s time to make pickles!

Rudbeckia

Rudbeckia

Sometimes known as Black-eyed Susan, it has composite flowers which will attract bees, hoverflies, parasitoid wasps, and robber flies. It’s also a great low-maintenance planting for an untended space. Rudbeckia self-sows and naturalizes aggressively.

Zinnias

Zinnias

These are the workhorse of any flower garden. Zinnias are easy to grow and will bloom all summer, especially if you keep up with deadheading. They’re excellent for attracting bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.

Bonus: Welcome-to-the-Garden Pollinator Collection

Support pollinators all season with this special collection of 13 old-fashioned single-blossomed heirloom, open-pollinated flowers and herbs. It includes calendula, echinacea, cosmos, sweet alyssum, bachelor’s button, cleome, sunflowers, rudbeckia, beebalm, phlox, and zinnia.

We give 30% of your purchase of this mix to the Piedmont Environmental Council for their “Buy Fresh Buy Local” Food Guide.

Additional Tips

  • Avoid using pesticides. Even organic pesticides can negatively impact beneficial insects the same way that they’re intended to harm pests. Opt for integrated pest management instead.
  • Let things get a little messy and provide natural, wild habitat whenever possible. Let part of your lawn grown, leave standing dead plant material, don’t get rid of autumn leaves, and let trees and shrubby areas grow. 
  • Build an insect hotel! You can find instructions here.

5 Birds Native to the Eastern U.S. To Attract to Your Garden


It’s hard not to love the birds that visit our yards and gardens. We love them for their beauty, their cheerful melodies, and because they’re a joy to watch. Many birds can also help you have a more productive garden. These are five of the many species native to the eastern U.S. that play important ecological roles in the garden.

Eastern Bluebirds

These stunning little beauties (seen above) are workhorses in the garden! They are heavy feeders, especially during the nesting season. Eastern Bluebirds (Sialia sialis) eat a variety of insects that would otherwise be feeding on your plants. They can be found throughout much of the Eastern U.S. year-round in woodlands, farmlands, and orchards.

Populations of Eastern Bluebirds have seen severe declines primarily due to competition with House Sparrows and Starlings for nesting sites. To attract them to your garden and give them a helping hand, you can create or purchase Blue-bird specific nest boxes. These nest boxes should have an entrance hole 1.5 inches in diameter. This size is large enough for the Eastern Bluebird but too small for many other species. 

You can also make your garden more attractive to them by adding a birdbath or other clean water source. Additionally, you can stock feeders with mealworms and plant sumac or elderberry, providing some of their favorite meals. 

Hear the Eastern Bluebird here.

House Wren (Troglodytes aedon)

House Wrens

Odds are you’ve seen a House Wren. They earned their name from their tendency to nest around human homes or in backyard birdhouses. While they lack the Bluebird’s vibrant colors, their cheerful personality and beautiful, bubbling song makes them just as fun to have around. 

During the spring and summer, you can find House Wrens throughout most of the eastern United States. They can be found year-round in parts of South Carolina and farther south. They feed on a wide range of insects, including moths, caterpillars, beetles, flies, and other troublesome pests!

As cavity nesters, House Wrens will use a variety of human-made birdhouses. You can upcycle old watering cans or scrap wood into suitable wren houses. You can also help them feel more comfortable in your garden and yard by planting dense shrubs or leaving some thick natural areas for them to use as shelter. If you have woodlands, leaving standing dead trees also helps make more natural cavities available for them and other birds.

You can hear the House Wren here

Eastern Phobebe (Sayornis phoebe)

Eastern Phoebes

You may already be able to recognize these birds by the call they’re named for, which sounds like “fee-be.” They also have the adorable habit of bobbing their tails when perched. Like the House Wren, they spend at least the spring and summer in most of the eastern United States and may also be seen year-round in the Southeast. They are some of the earliest birds to move north each spring. They’re common in woodlands, farmlands, and suburbs and are often spotted nesting under bridges and in eaves and rafters.

Phoebes are members of the family of birds known as the “flycatchers.” They catch most of their meals out of midair, feeding on flies, wasps, beetles, and other insects. They will also hover to grab bugs off foliage or drop to the ground to quickly grab an insect.

Eastern Phoebes are in decline in much of their summer range. You can help preserve this species and invite them to your garden by building appropriate nest boxes. You can find plans here. Be sure to get boxes up early! They also eat berries, so planting a few sumacs or elderberries can help attract them.

You can hear the Eastern Phoebe here.

Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)

Chickadees

Three different species of Chickadee call the eastern United States home. The Boreal Chickadee (Poecile hudsonicus) is only found in northern New England and into Canada though it has occasionally been spotted farther south. The Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) is found in the mountains of West Virginia and farther north, while the Carolina Chickadee (Poecile carolinensis) is found in southern Pennsylvania down to the middle of Florida. 

All of these species are omnivorous and will feed on insects throughout the year. Having them around can help keep pest populations low. They’ll hunt insects in your garden during the summer and find them in bark and dead plant material in the winter.

Thankfully chickadees are easy to attract to your yard. They’ll visit clean birdbaths and other water sources. Planting berry bushes like elderberries and seed crops like sunflowers are great ways to provide food for them. They’ll also readily visit feeders and particularly enjoy sunflower seeds, suet, and peanut butter. You can also help provide chickadees with protection from wind, rain, and snow by planting evergreen shrubs and other dense plants.  

Hear the Boreal Chickadee, Black-capped Chickadee, or the Carolina Chickadee by clicking their name.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris)

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Of course, I couldn’t leave the Ruby-throated Hummingbird off this list. They’re stunning, will help pollinate your plants, and eat various small soft-bodied insects, including gnats, aphids, fruit flies, and tiny spiders. The Ruby-throated Hummingbird can be found throughout the eastern United States during the summer and year-round in parts of Florida. They’re commonly seen in gardens and woodland edges.

You can attract these hummingbirds by putting up feeders or planting tubular or trumpet-shaped flowers. If you decide to use a feeder, you should use appropriate food (no red dye!) and clean the feeder often. You can find great information about feeding hummingbirds in this Audubon Society article. Great flowers to plant for these birds include cardinal flowers, sunflowers, bee balm, echinacea (coneflower), Jewelweed, Milkweed, and Fuchsia. You can also add flowering trees such as Flowering Dogwood or Crabapples to your yard.  

You can hear the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird here.

Tips for All Birds

One of the best things you can for any bird species is to stop using pesticides in your garden. Pesticides can make birds sick when they consume insects that have come into contact with these chemicals. 

You can also leave a few wild areas. Sometimes the “untidy” areas of your yard or woodland are the best for sheltering and feeding small birds. Keep this in mind when you have the urge to clear brush, dead trees, and dead plant material.

Lastly, you should plant native species. Native flowers, trees, and other plants help provide habitat and food for a wide variety of native birds.

The Importance of Sustainable Soil Management

Your garden harvest starts with healthy soil. How much produce you get, whether your plants are affected by disease, and even how many pests you have can be affected by how you treat your soil. But how you manage your soil can also affect wildlife and the environment, we always suggest getting help from professionals if you don’t know how to treat your landscape, by visiting southernpalmetto.com/services/ you can learn more about this! 

Algal Blooms

On this blog, we’ve frequently discussed the importance of mulch and cover crops. They are two simple ways to help prevent soil erosion and nutrient runoff. While these effects are obviously bad for your garden they also have more far-reaching consequences. When soil and nutrients erode they contribute to algal blooms in streams, lakes, rivers, and eventually the ocean. 

Algal blooms can be green, red, blue, or brown. They affect both marine and freshwater environments and produce toxins that have a variety of negative effects. The toxins can sicken or kill people and animals, create dead zones in the water, raise treatment costs for drinking water, and hurt industries that depend on clean water. One way we can prevent these algal blooms is to practice good soil management. An alkaline antioxidant water machine is an easy to install device which helps to ionize your water to produce alkaline antioxidant water or ionized water as it is more commonly known. An alkaline water machine can be easily attached to your water faucet to produce safe drinking water that is ionized.

There are several advantages of drinking alkaline ionized water. It helps to boost your immunity levels and reverses the signs of aging. It also helps to cleanse your system more effectively, thus making it an ideal choice to treat diseases such as acidosis. It also helps to balance out the pH levels in the body by reversing the acidic effects caused by junk food and aerated acidic soda drinks. The best way to ensure a steady supply of ionized water is to install an alkaline ionized water machine in your house. There are several models of water alkaline machines available in the market today in different price ranges. The price depends on the quality of materials used as well as the set of features offered in the ionizer. You can easily browse through the available models either in an online e-commerce site or in a department store before you decide on the brand of the machine that you want to buy. There are certain factors to keep in mind before you purchase your best alkaline water machine. The first thing to look for is the ease of use. It has to be a sleek design which does not occupy too much space in your kitchen and should have easy to operate controls. The other factor to keep in mind is the technology that is used for the ionization process. Unless the technology used is a superior one, your alkaline machine may not produce the kind of results that you are looking for. Finally, you must also keep in mind the budget that you have for the machine. You need not install it in all the taps in your house. You can choose to install it in the kitchen sink as that is where you are most likely to take your drinking water from.

Ultimately, even if you manage to install a really good alkaline water machine, you will not be able to derive the benefits out of it, unless you actually drink the ionized water. Therefore, make it a point to drink at least 8 liters of ionized water on a daily basis.

The best alkaline water filters have far more benefits than regular water filters! The use of an alkaline water filter in your home or business has extremely important benefits that lead to:

  • Higher quality and enjoyment of life!
  • Disease fighting benefits that make your life stronger and longer!

However, are all alkaline water machines equal? If they don’t provide the health benefits described in the following paragraphs, don’t waist your time and money!

Research has shown that the best alkaline machines outperform regular water filter benefits! Alkaline water greatly exceeds the health benefits of tap water, charcoal water filters, reverse osmosis, and bottled water as well!

Alkaline machines produce electrolyzed water orp values that are much healthier for the body to absorb and digest.

Good Soil Practices

Sustainable soil management means using practices that build healthy soil, reduce erosion with NG Turf products, and reduce the need for fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides. They include:

  • Planting cover crops, especially in the fall to prevent erosion and add nutrients and organic matter to the soil.
  • Using mulch around plants whenever possible to prevent erosion, suppress weeds, hold moisture, and add nutrients and organic matter to the soil.  
  • Rotating crops to disrupt disease and pest life cycles and reduce excess nutrients.
  • Reducing soil compaction which helps fungal and insect life in soil thrive. Whenever possible reduce tilling and using equipment. 
  • Providing habitat for beneficial insects like cover crops, mulch, wildflower patches, and insect hotels.

While small gardeners and farmers are not the biggest contributors to this type of pollution every little bit helps. You can ask long island landscaping services to help you add some trees and flowers to make your garden look prettier. Making these small changes can improve your garden, improve water quality, and help wildlife.