beneficial insects in the garden.

The ecosystem is shared by all species, good and bad. Beneficial garden insects or downright rotten cheeky pests, they all have a right to their place and a role to play in the dynamic relationship to keep nature balanced.
Sometimes it's just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Good garden bugs in your garden can overwhelm a different area if they are taken out of their natural environment. Loveable rabbits in the wild or zoo are naughty bunnies on your land and butterflies are beautiful but not their killer caterpillar kids!
What are the beneficial garden insects birds and animals?
Who are we to say... as a writer once said: "It may be that frogs, ducks, hedgehogs and moles are good because they eat slugs. Or it may be that slugs are good because they feed frogs, ducks, hedgehogs and moles. More likely, there's no morality in nature at all."
So in praise of good garden bugs and creatures here we go:

Green lacewing
Lacewings should be called race wings — they work fast, going flat-out eating (or rather sucking dry) hundreds of bugs and their eggs. It is the lacewing larvae which are most predatory, and their favourite targets are aphids, whitefly, leafhoppers, mites, mealybugs, scale insects and some moths and caterpillars.
Native to Australia, and now found worldwide, lacewings can be bought from bug suppliers in quantity. It helps to encourage them to stay around by providing a varied diet. For a start, they also like nectar, so grow flowering plants nearby. Have a variety of plants so they get a variety of bugs.
They're more faithful than ladybugs, but the adult lacewings fly around at night, and are attracted to nearby lights.
Ladybugs
Often called Ladybirds or Ladybeetles, ladybugs look just the dearest ladies, waddling along in their pretty spots. But they have a roving eye and will desert you for another. Even if you buy them, don't always expect to find many around when you need them. Green lacewings are a safer buy.
Any faithful ladybugs you have are true beneficial insects and devour aphids, scale, mealybugs and other small soft-bodied insects. They soon clean up the aphids on a plant... if fact you can carefully move ladybugs around your garden if you wish. As long as they are well fed, they will stay true to you.
If a ladybug sees you coming, it will curl up and fall off the edge of the leaf, so hold your hand to catch it. Soon it will stop hiding under its shell and you can place it where you want it — say on a badly infested plant at the other side of the garden.
Ladybug larvae are about 4mm long with similar markings to adults. They are very hungry and not so likely to leave the scene than their parents.
There are many different ladybugs all with their own markings and habits. Not all are red with black spots; they come in yellow with stripes even. There is one variety which attacks the pupae of native ladybugs. Called the Asiatic harlequin ladybird, it has only recently been accidentally introduced into some countries.
Parasite Wasps
These are tiny wasps quite unlike big yellow-striped bullies that sting. Parasitic wasps are divided into many species and the adults feed on nectar and pollen, therefore planting flowers near your vegetables encourages these little winged creatures.
The family of Chalcid wasps include Trichogramma which kill the eggs of the moth species Lepidoptera, such as codling moth and others which turn into ravenous caterpillar pests.
Trichogramma lay their eggs inside the larger eggs of Lepidoptera, then hatch out into larvae and no guesses what they feed on. Instead of a pesky caterpillar emerging from a lepidoptera moth egg, there is an adult Trichogramma wasp, ready to find a mate and start the good cycle again.
Other Chalcid wasps and wasps from the Ichneumon and Braconid family kill many of the pests that eat or suck plants. The likes of the tomato hornworm, cut worm, cabbage worm and cabbage looper, corn earworm and corn borer, cutworm, armyworm, aphids, leaf roller, codling moth and various other caterpillars and grubs, all fall prey to parasitic wasps.
As well as invading the eggs of their host, parasitic wasps can also inject their eggs into live hosts, usually a caterpillar or pest worm. Still other wasps lay their minute white eggs on the outside of a pest. The eggs turn into larvae and burrow and pupate inside the host or form a cocoon on the outside.
Trichogramma and a few of the other wasps can be usually be bought and posted to you from suppliers.
Slaters
Talk about community living, their abundance knows no bounds. Slaters, also known as woodlice, sowbugs or pill bugs, generally ignore green plants, preferring decayed damp material. They are sensitive to hot, dry conditions and will die of dehydration if exposed too long, especially in their young moulting stages.
Slaters are beneficial insects in that they help breakdown organic matter, but if there is a population explosion, they have been known to dine on ripe, soft fruits touching the soil, such as strawberries, and very occasionally plant roots, and even young growth shoots.
Control slaters by keeping areas where you don't want them well swept, dry and free of any organic material.
Slugs
Slimy, slippery slugs (... like politicians), seem to create havoc where ever they go, but some praise must go to them (like some politicians).
They are stars in your compost; in fact they help with any rotting vegetation anywhere. Interestingly, they will also break down animal fat – if you put that in your compost. The smallest slugs are the worst for fresh green leaves, but the adults prefer rotten old stuff which they nicely turn in compost.
Spiders
It would be rare to find anyone that holds spiders in deep affection... more like fear and loathing. Respect would be the best way to look at spiders and avoid them if you can but benefit from their predatory insect feasting in your garden and house.
Their value as natural pest control providers is mammoth and calculations have shown unbelievable amounts of insects are trapped and killed by spiders. Along with birds, spiders are the main controllers of cicadas which damage plants where they lay eggs and suck tree roots when in their nymph stage underground.
By attracting beneficial garden insects and encouraging wildlife, it means these helpful bugs and creatures multiply

is it being backwards?

our aim is to resacitate this system and add some more production ingredients that are ecologically compatable!!.we aren't backwards but we are extremely frontward coz we had already discovered the wall that morden chemical and mechanical farming is going to bang on.We had turned and the majority is still going.whats wrong with this old tradition?

Settling patterns may differ, for example , most Bantu, stretching from the Cape to Kenya, do not settle in large compounds. Each family settles within reach of a communal water supply such as a river. So individually family housing units may be quite widely spread but always close to water and the communal grazing which obviously also needs to be close to water. All the other requirements as illustrated in the video are present. The grazing is communal but each individuals cattle are kraaled in the sacred family kraal at the homestead and are not communally owned. The manure collected from the overnighting of cattle is collected at the beginning of each planting season and spread on the arable lands. One bovine provides sufficient manure for one acre.
In many areas the grain is stored under the kraal. Heavy ammonia from the urine filters through the soil into the sealed store. No chemicals are needed to control pests or fungi.
Each arable land is close to the family home and once more is not communally owned. The system does not allow for "beef production" so no individual or family may own more cattle than is required for plowing and transport, family milk and meat and rituals. The arable lands are to supply food, beer and medicine for the family and not for commercial crops such as cotton etc.
Whenever work is required to be done which an individual family cannot cope with, the burden of seasonal work is shared by the members of the community. For example it is usual for careful hand cultivation with a hoe, to be shared with the community. Hand cultivation is necessary because intercropping is the usual practice. The community will circulate from from arable land to arable land until each family's fields have been completed. This requires some careful planning by the women, who brew the traditional umqomboti or doro, (sorghum beer) which is an essential part of the system. This takes seven days to ferment so requires some joint planning by all the families so that there is no overlapping. This 'nhimbe system' of communal help is an important part of communal living. The building of a new cattle kraal or the building of a new house requiring help for the collection of thatching grass, mud and manure for the walls and floor, is shared. Ritual beer is essential to bless the labour and the project.
Rather than buying or bartering, the ubique communal spirit of 'ubuntu' is illustrated by the borrowing of a broody hen from one person and the borrowing of a dozen eggs from another. When the eggs have hatched, the hen is kept with the chicks until she lays a dozen eggs. By this the chicks can look after themselves. The hen is returned to the owner and so are the twelve eggs. The owner of the new eggs has now acquired some genetic diversity for his flock.


In a modern agro-ecological system, using this already perfect system as the foundation, the addition of a biodigester might require some thought as to storing the effluent from the digester in an efficient manner, not to upset the tradition of spreading the manure at planting time.

we have uninformed,noncommited hence ineffective youth

youths are not only leaders of tommorow but are the next generation of Earth castodians therefore I feel that they must be fully equiped and be highly paticipative in enviromental turnaround strategies.Thanks to the farmers weekly magazine for publishing my article on Novermber 20.

To The editor

From Tarirai MPOFU




editor I am much concerned about the young south africans living in farms or farm compounds.once upon a time I asked a 30 year old guy what he likes for breakfast he joyously answered 'porridge with peanut butter', when again I asked him how about planting some groundnuts in his back yard , he annoyedly answered with a question 'what are groundnuts?'.again one weekend of september ,I [qualified agric extension officer] spent the whole day cleaning and sorting a fowlrun for a 27 year old lady who had requisted my technical help during my off duty but could't make it outside her bedroom because she was very bussy with her unemployed boyfriend and secrificed to let me withdraw my free technical support .On satuday 24 october I bumped ito a meeting for youth called by a church organisation at old bylets school in cintsa, the attendace was pretty disgracefull.Just imagine a meeting called by a church which has a vision to freely equip about 300 youths with technical skills nevertheless only 7 including myself were the only youth the paster preached to ,other 9 or 10 were white haired chaps.What a shame youth, you are school drop outs ,you are poor,you are unskilled you are compound dwellers you are immature fathers and mothers but you are keen to let oppotunities slid away from your hands so crazyly.what can any one do for you then?