Beneficial insect
Lacewing
The delicate green adult is harmless; its larva is a soft-bodied-pest assassin.
A single 'aphid lion' larva can eat 200 aphids a week.
How to spot it (and its larva)
Adults are slender, pale-green insects about 12–20 mm long with large clear, veined wings held like a tent and coppery eyes. They flutter weakly around lights at night. The adult mostly sips nectar. It is the larva, nicknamed the 'aphid lion,' that hunts: a tan-and-brown, flat, alligator-shaped grub with big curved sickle jaws it uses to drain prey.
Their eggs are unmistakable and often mistaken for a fungus or a mite: each pale oval egg sits on the tip of a fine hair-like stalk, in little clusters on the underside of leaves.
What it hunts
The pests it clears for you. Tap any one for the full identify-and-control guide.
- Aphids: Top prey; the larva is a relentless aphid hunter.
- Small caterpillars & eggs: Young larvae and moth eggs are eaten too.
How to invite it in
You don't buy most beneficials. You build the habitat that keeps a wild population breeding on-site. Do these and they come, and stay.
- Grow nectar plants for the adults
Adults feed on nectar, pollen, and honeydew. Dill, coriander, cosmos, dandelion, and angelica keep them laying eggs in your beds.
- Skip the porch-light bug zapper
Adults are drawn to light at night and get killed in zappers by the thousand. Turn off or shield lights near the garden in summer.
Plants and habitat that bring them in
Small-flowered plants feed the adults so they stay and breed. A packet of these does more for lasting control than a bag of mail-order bugs.
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Don't undo it
The fastest way to lose a beneficial is a broad-spectrum spray. It kills the predators faster than the pests and triggers a worse rebound.
- Broad-spectrum sprays wipe out the fragile adults and the eggs on your leaf undersides
- Scraping off the stalked eggs thinking they're pest eggs or fungus
- Night bug zappers, which slaughter the egg-laying adults
Should you buy them?
Lacewings are the one beneficial worth mail-ordering: you buy the EGGS (cheap, ship well), sprinkle them onto infested plants, and the larvae hatch right where the aphids are. This actually works, unlike bagged adult ladybugs.
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Questions about lacewings
Are the little eggs on stalks under my leaves a pest?+
No, those stalked eggs are green lacewing eggs, one of the best things in your garden. Leave them; the larvae that hatch are ferocious aphid and mite hunters.
Can I buy lacewings and have them work?+
Yes, if you buy the eggs rather than adults. Scatter lacewing eggs onto aphid-heavy plants and the hatching 'aphid lions' go straight to work. It's the most reliable beneficial-insect purchase there is.
Plan a garden good bugs want to live in
PlotToTable sizes your beds, spaces every crop for airflow, and flags the pests that hit what you grow, so the predators that eat them have a reason to stay.