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Wasps, beetles, butterflies, bees - the world is covered in bugs.
That's the message Dallas County Master Gardener shared at a program intended for children but mainly attended by adult gardeners Tuesday, March 18, at Manske Public Library.
The mission of the Dallas County Master Gardeners, which is part of the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, is to educate the public regarding good horticultural practices, which includes taking care of insects, Rozier said. She said only a tiny percent of the insects in a garden are "bad," meaning they eat a gardener's plants, eat clothing, eat the wood in buildings, bite people or make people ill.
Instead, almost all insects are helpful to the gardener, pollinating plants, composting dead plants or getting rid of gardent pests, she said.
She showed an interactive slide show, presenting praying mantises ("Some of them get so big they can eat mice!" she said.); dragonflies and damselflies, which eat mosquitoes; assassin bugs, which work in groups to kill garden pests; big-eyed bugs, which eat chinch bugs that kill lawns; and cicada killers, which she said is a wasp but doesn't sting unless a person runs into them. She showed a photo of a cicada killer carrying a cicada to its nest, where it feeds it to the cicada killer's larvae.
She also showed photos of lady bettles and their larva and discussed green lacewings, which she said is her favorite insect, but is very shy and not easy to find.
"There are so many insects that nobody has seen or even known what they all are," she said.
The Dallas County Master Gardeners offers a range of resources and classes free to the public around the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Visit their website for more information.
