Mail-Order Ladies
This is a spot-free variety of ladybug, striped with shadows from the flower stems. Most people know that ladybugs are beneficial in the garden; one ladybug can eat up to 50 harmful aphids a day.
I read somewhere that in the old days, people used to order supplies of live ladybugs by mail to protect their vegetable and rose gardens. The supplier took the requisite number of specimens, put them in a box with a large pine cone, and the ladybugs obligingly crawled into the crevices and made themselves at home for a week or two. Apparently they like this environment and find enough to eat to sustain them. The box was then shipped, without fear of damaging the insects, and when it arrived, the purchaser simply tossed the pine cone into the garden and the ladybugs crawled out and went right to work. Yet another example of pioneer ingenuity!
Mail-Order Ladies
This is a spot-free variety of ladybug, striped with shadows from the flower stems. Most people know that ladybugs are beneficial in the garden; one ladybug can eat up to 50 harmful aphids a day.
I read somewhere that in the old days, people used to order supplies of live ladybugs by mail to protect their vegetable and rose gardens. The supplier took the requisite number of specimens, put them in a box with a large pine cone, and the ladybugs obligingly crawled into the crevices and made themselves at home for a week or two. Apparently they like this environment and find enough to eat to sustain them. The box was then shipped, without fear of damaging the insects, and when it arrived, the purchaser simply tossed the pine cone into the garden and the ladybugs crawled out and went right to work. Yet another example of pioneer ingenuity!