GardenDesk

Rave Reviews for Garden Insects of North America Book

A few years ago, I wrote a post about how much I liked the book Garden Insects of North America: The Ultimate Guide to Backyard Bugs, by Whitney Cranshaw.

Except for a couple of people commenting on that first post, It seems that nobody likes talking about or reading about insects.

I guess I'm somewhat of an Entomologist at heart because I find bugs fascinating. Understanding the pest insects as well as the beneficial insects found in the garden is a very important part of organic gardening.

I wrote about that in my recent post, Chemical Pesticides Aren't the Answer.
I don't think many people have wanted to read it because, like I said before, many gardeners are uncomfortable about insects.

Since that first post about my favorite Insect Guide, I have used the book a lot, but have heard virtually nothing about it from anyone else. So I'm happy to point out that others now agree with me that this book is a must have.

As I've been looking through countless catalogs and magazines this winter, I keep seeing references to Cranshaw's book. After seeing it at least a half dozen times, I thought I should bring it to your attention again. I saved the last two places I saw it for you.

It appears in the ARIBCO-Organics catalog and gets a glowing review:

In case you can't read it, it says: "Garden Insects of North America - Learn about all the good and bad bugs in your garden. This is the most comprehensive guide available, written by Dr. Whitney Cranshaw, an insect pest specialist. It contains information on 1400 insects and mites that could attack everything in your garden, yard, or farm. It includes colored illustrations for most of them, as well as their life cycles. It details species-specific treatments and offers up-to-date pest management tips. It is user-friendly with its organization by affected plant parts. Geographically, It covers both the continental United States and Canada."

Then Just yesterday I bought the new Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series, Guide To Organic Gardening Bookazine and sure enough, Garden Insects of North America is mentioned.

I love this year's Mother Earth News Guide to Organic Gardening. In it there is a great article entitled "Guide to Organic Pest Control", by Barbara Pleasant. In that article she is complimentary of the book. On page 64 she writes "Every vegetable gardener should have a copy of Whitney Cranshaw's Insects of North America, which covers hundreds of bugs that inhabit home gardens."

It sure is nice to finally see that others are agreeing with me. I have this book listed on my 25 favorite Gardening Books and look up bugs in my copy of Garden Insects of North America: The Ultimate Guide to Backyard Bugs often!

I just can't wait till it's warm enough to even be concerned with insects!

Why Chemical Pesticides Aren't The Answer

For many gardeners, at the first sign of bugs on their garden plants, they reach for an insect killing spray. That is the wrong approach. Never mind what that does to the environment and your health, poisons don't discriminate. When a gardener applies an insecticide, there are actually "good bugs" in the garden that are killed along with the problem insects. If you are new to the idea of beneficial insects, let me give you an example. If you saw the bug in the below picture on one of your tomatoes, would you want to destroy it?

You shouldn't. That is a Spined Soldier Bug and he is a soldier in the gardener's army. The Soldier is beneficial because it eats aphids, armyworms, beetles, cabbage loopers and other soft-bodied insects. The Soldier Beetle is so beneficial that there was a big article in Organic Gardening Magazine about how to trap them in the wild for the purpose of releasing them in your garden.

Here is a picture of another insect you might find in an organic vegetable garden:

Surely that ugly thing needs to be killed, you might be thinking. There is more in this picture than meets the eye. This insect is a very destructive Tomato Hornworm, but look closer. What about the little white cocoons attached to it? These are Braconid wasp cocoons. Braconid Wasps are parasitic. They live in the Hornworm (which is actually a caterpillar) as larvae, and then make cocoons on the outside to pupate. The adult wasps emerge, kill the caterpillar and fly off to find more caterpillars to destroy.

See, who needs chemical insecticides to control caterpillars? Nature has it covered - unless you kill the braconid wasps with chemicals first.

To further illustrate this cycle, my daughter actually kept a hornworm in a jar and fed it tomato leaves. We got to witness the tiny wasps emerge and kill the hornworm. here is a picture montage lifted from one of my older posts about this:

We emptied the whole jar back out in the garden. I counted over 300 cocoons on this hornworm! If only half of them find a new caterpillar to invade, I soon won't have any caterpillar problems at all. No need for chemicals - nature can take care of things if we let it.

There are even smaller parasitic wasps out there. Several specialty organic garden stores sell organic and natural fertilizers and pesticides. They sell Trichogramma wasps for you to introduce into your garden to do a similar thing that my Braconids are doing - especially to get rid of moths. The Trichogramma wasps are almost microscopic!

These are just a few examples of beneficial insects. Depending on where you live, you will encounter different ones. When you find an insect in your garden, do some local research to determine if it is good or bad. If there is plant damage near by, don't assume that the creature you found is the culprit. It might be there to feed on the actual pest!

Other beneficial insects that I have discovered in my garden are ladybugs, lacewings, praying mantids, and bees.

The bottom line is this: If you spray insecticide at all, you won't have any beneficial insects to help you. When the pest insects come back, they will inflict even more damage because of the absence of beneficials.

Gardeners and farmers who use chemicals force themselves into a never-ending cycle. They continue to have to spend money to temporarily solve their pest problems in an unsafe and harmful way. I think nature's way is better. Sometimes I may have to wait on the beneficials, hand pick pest bugs, and even lose a few crops, but I like watching nature work. It keeps gardening a fascinating endeavor instead of a divide and conquer campaign. Knowing that I'm participating with nature instead of destroying it, makes makes me feel good.

 

I realize that insects are not a popular topic but I would like to write an individual post about each specific common garden insects - good and bad. If you don't mind insects, please help me build the list. If you have examples and/or pictures of beneficial insects that you have encountered, please email them to me at [email protected].

Thanks!

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Past blog posts about insects:

Rid Blister Beetles Organically	Identifying Garden Insects!
Hornworm or Space Alien?!	The Good, The Bad, The Ugly