How to Attract Ladybugs to Your Garden to Eat Pests!

Ladybugs are one of the gardener’s biggest allies! Both the adults and their ferocious-looking larvae are insatiable aphid-munchers, so they’re an essential part of your garden’s natural pest control team. Learn how to identify ladybugs in all of their life stages—and make your garden irresistible to them.

The beneficial bugs found in our gardens vastly outweigh garden pests, so it pays to adopt a nature–friendly approach to gardening. Scour the bushes, look among the vegetables or dig down into the soil and you’ll discover a myriad of beneficials. Our personal favorite? The ladybug, whose jazzy wing markings are always a delight to see.

You probably know an adult ladybug when you see one, but what about their eggs, larvae and pupal stages? 

Identifying Ladybugs

There are many different species of ladybugs, often named according to the number of spots on their wing cases. For example, the two–spot ladybug, the seven-spot ladybug, the 14–spot, and the seriously funky–looking 22–spot ladybug!

The harlequin ladybug is invasive in both North America and Europe and will eat the eggs and larvae of other ladybugs when food is scarce. But they’re not all bad—they eat lots of pests too!

Also, not all spotted bugs are ladybugs! Our video will show you what they look like. Avoid the lookalikes such as the Mexican Bean Beetle.

Ladybug Life Cycle

The ladybug life cycle consists of four distinct phases (which we show in the video above).

Eggs

Below are the tiny eggs, typically laid on the undersides of leaves in batches of anything from five to 40 eggs. Nettles are a firm favorite for egg laying, so it’s worth leaving a few patches of nettles to keep these aphid–munching beetles close by.

Larval Stage

And ladybugs eat lots of aphids. As soon as the eggs hatch, the formidable–looking, spiky larvae begin gorging on any aphids they can find. Their voracious appetites will see them devour up to 50 aphids a day, or 5,000 during their lifetime. They eat other soft–bodied pests too, including whitefly, mites and scale insects, making them one of the long-suffering gardener’s very best friends!

Pupal Stage

After a series of molts the larva pupates. Often yellow or orange and with black markings, this pupal stage lasts for around one to two weeks during which time the magical transformation from larva to adult beetle occurs.

Adult Beetles

Then, finally, the adult beetle emerges. The brightly–colored beetles hibernate over winter, usually in groups or aggregations, before mating soon after waking up again in spring, ready to start the lifecycle all over again.

Encourage More Ladybugs Into Your Garden

As well as leaving some nettles be, avoid spraying pesticides, which will have a knock–on effect on predators such as ladybugs. It’s tempting to panic at the first sign of aphids, but a little restraint often pays off with a visit from these hungry bugs.

Ladybugs can also be attracted into your garden with pollen–rich blooms. Flat–topped flowers such as yarrow, angelica, fennel and dill are great, along with common companion plants like calendula, sweet alyssum and marigold.

Offer ladybugs somewhere to overwinter too. They usually hibernate in hollow stems and other nooks and crannies, so delay cutting back old stems till spring. Or why not make your own ladybug hotel by stuffing straw and a bundle of wide bamboo sections into an old pot, tied together to keep them all in place. Stuff more straw around the sides for insulation, and position the ladybug house one to three feet above the ground, in a sheltered, sunny spot.

Ladybugs aren’t the only “good guys.” Read more about beneficial insects in the garden!

Try out the Almanac Garden Planner for Free!

To plan and grow your garden the Almanac way, try out our online Garden Planner! We encourage all our readers to try growing a garden of goodness!  Towards that goal, we offer the garden planner for free for seven days. This leaves ample to play around on your computer and try out the garden planner. There are absolutely no strings attached.

Try out the Garden Planner today!