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Good Bugs Bad Bugs

Organic gardeners divide the insect world into two camps: good bugs and bad bugs.


The bad bugs bring death, disease, and destruction, they suck the life out of plants, infest the soil and lay eggs by the thousands.


The good bugs remind me of an army of peacekeepers, who come marching in bringing peace and harmony. They work quietly, taking care of the bad bugs by munching on them and generally getting rid of your enemies for you.


Now, you would think that bad bugs would look horrible and good ones would be pretty but that is not always the case i.e A ground beetle, which eats slugs, is distinguished from a darkling beetle, which eats plants, by a ridge on its head from which the ground beetle's antennae protrude.


Now, I don't know if you have ever tried to get down and close enough to a beetle to see this difference, I haven't, and I don't think I really want to!


A friend of mine once wiped out an entire cache of yellow eggs on the underside of an aphid- infested leaf, thinking that she was destroying the young of an evil Mexican bean beetle, however, she really destroyed the nursery of a ladybug, whose eggs would have eventually hatched and would have turned into an army of hungry aphid eating larvae!


I think for weeks, she must have apologized to all the ladybugs in her garden!


I am good at giving advice on how to get rid of bugs in your garden, but I really don't like to kill them. I hate to pick slugs off of a plant, and then have to decide what I am going to do with them. I feel the creature moving in my hand, and that makes me feel like a potential murderer. what if it has babies somewhere? Then I talk to myself and convince the weakling side of me, that I have no choice, if I want to keep my plants alive.


Coward that I am, I toss the slug out into the street, and hope that it will venture into someone else's garden. As luck would have it, I actually threw one on to the road, and a passing motorist took care of the problem for me, so that is how I decided to deal with the slug and snail population, in my garden!


I did try talking to them and explaining that if they would just leave my plants alone,I would not have to take such drastic action, but I know they were not paying any attention, so out into the traffic, they went.


Ena Clewes is an author of short stories and is an avid Organic Gardener. Read Ena's new ebook" How To Master Affordable Organic Gardening" you will find the link on the website http://www.organicgardengardening.com


Source: www.articlecity.com