Most of us get very excited as the days get longer and the plants are greener, and spring is officially warming our hearts as well as our skin. But we all notice that with a warming to our hearts and hearth, comes another visitor in a small, often buzzing form.
As someone who has studied insects and arachnids, I love about 99.5% of these little darlings, but just like that wacky second cousin once removed that comes to every family holiday party, there are those that we just dread seeing every year. Oh, you know who I am talking about. Not your cousin, but the first sighting of soil gnats, aphids or the maddening mosquitoes can send shivers down your spine.
So, let’s consider this a therapy moment and talk about the good, bad and ugly side of entomology. Loads of us plant pollinator gardens to attract bees, butterflies and moths, but we have to remember that there are a lot of beetles, flies, caterpillars and wasps that play an important role in pollinating our favorite flowers and vegetables. One of my favorite moths, the hawk moth or hummingbird moth starts life as a very familiar garden ‘enemy’ the tomato hornworm, yes, the big fat, juicy green critter devouring your plants. But did you know that the hawkmoth has a specialized proboscis (long strawlike mouth part for sucking up nectar) that is longer than most other moths and butterflies and is often the only one that can pollinate things like trumpet vine? Because they are moths, they tend to primarily fly at night and will also pollinate the evening primrose, four-o-clocks and many cactus flowers. If you just can’t stand the hornworms devouring your tomatoes, grape vines, etc. you can just toss them away and they will find something else to eat, they are terrible at finding their way back to the garden.
Another of my favorite creatures to attract have a very ominous common name, the assassin bug. The assassin bug is in the ‘true bug’ family or Hemiptera family. What’s interesting about this suborder of insects is their unique features. Many people have heard of ‘kissing bugs’, and they are very close in appearance to the assassin, but they have a much longer ‘nose’. We refer to them as conenose insects and the true assassin bug does not have that feature. With their long legs and long antennae and strange strawlike mouth parts they get a bad rap as possibly being bad for the garden. In reality, these little pointy-shouldered wonders are out there eating thousands of aphids, flies and other insects. In fact, of the 23 varieties of assassin bugs in Colorado, none of them feed on mammals. The ‘bite’ does hurt, but they are rather reclusive and prefer to avoid us at all costs. As for the kissing bug, fortunately, we only have one known species in Colorado and they tend to stay close to rodent dens, so we are a lot less likely to encounter them.
Last on my list of creepy crawly friends is the lowly aphid. I put that up there with the mosquito for creatures that we despise, but since mosquitoes don’t eat our garden plants, I will leave them alone for now. So why would I include the aphid on my list of creatures to welcome to the garden? First, we really are outnumbered and they will show up whether we like it or not, second, they are usually the first ‘pest’ critter we see each spring eating fresh young leaves and that is a good indicator that spring is really here and summer is close behind, and lastly, they are one of the most abundant food sources for our ladybugs, lacewings, assassin bugs and parasitic wasps at the beginning of the season. So, you might see this one as a bit of a stretch, but sometimes it’s O.K. not to kill every aphid we see. After all, they fill a valuable role in the ecological cycle of some of our best predatory insects.
Happy spring and enjoy all facets of your garden!
Heather Houk is the Horticulture and Agriculture specialist for the La Plata County Extension Office.
