Yesterday to my horror, I discovered that there has been some significant pest damage to several Tomato and Borage plants in the greenhouse. They were not yet beyond recovery but I needed to do something fast. After looking through a few books and taking some close up shots, (I have included one here), I discovered that the pest in question is a type of Aphid known as green peach. Aphids have two stages of life, most commonly they are seen flying around as tiny black fly's with rather large wings for their body size, but in the first stage they are little green insects that crawl all over your plants sucking the life out of them!



So, today I drove up to Brampton to a warehouse that specializes in selling beneficial insects to large greenhouse operations, and bought the smallest quantity of ladybugs they would sell me. The cotton bag in this photo is filled with 3,000 ladybugs. After driving back, I released a few hundred of them into the greenhouse and put the rest back in the foam cooler they came in and placed it in the fridge. As this was my first time, it was a bit creepy intentionally opening a bag with 3,000 bugs in it! At first sign the ladybugs don't seem to be doing much, just crawling around, I even put a few right on the aphids and they just kept walking as if uninterested. I was told the ladybugs would survive in the fridge for 4-8 weeks. I will release some more in the next few days into the greenhouse and continue to monitor the infestation problem. Don't worry, I will end up releasing the left over ladybugs outdoors instead of letting them pass away in the fridge.

Its been interesting researching beneficial insects, there's many natural predators to common insect problems, its very encouraging (in theory) to know that "good" can prevail over "evil" without the use of pesticides. I will update the blog on what happens. There are other bugs I can get if the ladybugs don't work out, worst case scenario there's always the praying mantis, although the idea of a few dozen 5-inch bugs crawling around in the greenhouse sends shivers up my spine (and not the good kind!). Also praying mantises will eat the beneficial bugs as well not just the ones that damage crops.