Wildflowers
aren’t only beautiful and easy to maintain. They
could soon be used in your home landscape as natural
pesticides.
“Insects are naturally attracted to wildflowers, and not
all insects are bad,” said Kris Braman, a University of
Georgia
entomologist. “With insects, there are the good, the bad
and the ugly. The key is to know which ones are which.”
Attracting ‘Good’ Bugs
Working in her lab at the UGA Georgia Experiment Station in
Griffin, Braman has seen firsthand how much beneficial insects
— those that eat the bugs we view as pests — love
wildflowers.
“The wildflowers give the beneficials somewhere to live,
and this makes them stay where you want them — in your lawn
eating
the bad bugs,” she said.
The “good” bugs include lady beetles, parasitic
wasps
and flies and several spider species. “You want to attract
parasites and predators that feed on other pests,” Braman
said. “So far, we’ve found wildflowers do an excellent job
of attracting beneficial insects.”
You Need Lots of Flowers
So which wildflower varieties do beneficial insects like best?
And which should you plant?
“Wildflowers are usually sold in mixes containing many
flowers that are excellent hosts for beneficials,” Braman
said. She is still working to identify the best ‘pest-fighting’
wildflower varieties.
Braman says the key is to select a mix that will produce
flowers
throughout the year. “You want to have a series of blooming
plants so there’s something blooming and attractive to
beneficials
all the time,” she said.
Wildflower mixes can be bought at most home improvement or
garden centers or ordered through seed catalogs.
No matter which wildflower mix you select, make sure it’s the
right one for your area. “Pick a mix that’s suitable for
the Southeast or the coast, depending on where you live,”
Braman said.
And now is the time to plant. “Put them out in the fall
and get them seeded before Thanksgiving for fall planting,”
Braman said. “Late winter is another opportunity for some
mixes. Always check your planting directions.”
Adding wildflowers to your landscape is just one way to help
reduce the amount of pesticide you apply in your home
landscape.
Other Alternative Pesticides
“You can also spot-spray when you see a pest problem,
instead of cover-spraying,” she said. “And
horticultural
oils are also excellent for targeting pests.”
The next step in Braman’s research project is to compare the
costs of using wildflowers with pesticides to using just
pesticides.
“Wildflowers aren’t a total solution to pest
control,”
Braman said. “But we know they can certainly reduce the need
for pesticides. Our focus is to improve the habitat by taking
advantage of beneficial insects when we can.”
(Lady beetle image by Scott Bauer, USDA. Photo of Kris
Braman
by Sharon Omahen, University of Georgia College of Agricultural
and Environmental Sciences.)
