Top Tweets for #INSECTICIDES

This is a ladybird larva. It looks nothing like a ladybird. It looks like a tiny black alligator with orange spots — and most gardeners crush it thinking it's a pest. That mistake costs the garden dearly. An adult ladybird eats around 50 aphids a day. Its larva can devour up to 500 before it pupates. Ten times as many. That strange-looking creature working its way along your tomato stems is the most effective phase of a ladybird's entire life. Once you know what to look for, the larva is unmistakable: an elongated blue-black body with six orange spots along the sides, six short legs, slow and methodical movement up and down stems. It doesn't fly, doesn't jump, doesn't hide. It moves from one aphid colony to the next and feeds continuously for two to three weeks before pupating. The pupa looks like a small, still orange droplet fixed to a leaf — and it too gets removed during routine plant tidying. Inside it, the adult ladybird is forming. If you find aphids on a plant and ladybird larvae among them, leave them alone. The biological control is already working. 🐞