A Glimpse of Thursday, from Alice's Perspective.

It's Ladybug Season.  The outside Ladybugs are doing what they can to become inside Ladybugs, so they can hibernate the winter away in comfort.  This old house has ample cracks and tiny spaces that allow them entry.  When they come in, Alice takes it upon herself to monitor their activity.

Thank goodness we don't get the scourge of Ladybugs that I have heard that some people have in their houses in winter.  We only get a few ... enough to keep Alice occupied and out of trouble, but not so much as to be a problem.

Ladybugs

This old house of ours has cracks and crevices that are sufficient entry points in the fall for ladybugs seeking places for their winter hibernation.  Most of them end up dead on the floor or a windowsill, and the ones that survive are endlessly entertaining for the cats.

Some actually successfully hibernate.  They emerge from their hiding places when warm weather arrives (like it did on Wednesday) and we find them trying to figure out a way to get outside, usually crawling on or around the windows. 

 

 

 

The other day, I went around the house with a jar and gathered up all the ladybugs I saw ... and I took them out to the greenhouse to help rid the roses of their spring crop of aphids.  As I was putting each ladybug into the jar, I was promising them that I was taking them to a place where their children would always have enough to eat.

 

 

 

 

When I got to the greenhouse and opened the jar, the ladybugs quickly crawled to the rim and set off to find suitable places to set up housekeeping.

 

 

 

Caught an action shot of a ladybug taking flight in this photo!

 

 

There are plenty of aphids on the roses in the greenhouse to go around.  It's not the ladybugs themselves that are going to do the bulk of the eating, though.  The adult ladybugs mate and lay their eggs in locations with an ample food supply, and it's the larvae who are voracious little aphid eating machines.  (See what the larvae look like in THIS post from last year.)

 

 

 

I've done my part.  It's all up to the ladybugs now.

 

 

Ladybugs in the Greenhouse

While I have been taking best advantage of our unseasonably warm March weather by working outside in the rose gardens for the past couple of weeks, the warm conditions allowed aphids to infest the new growth on the roses in a small section of the greenhouse.  (some of my large roses that I ordered from Eurodesert Roses last year)  The rest of the 300+ roses in the remainder of the greenhouse are fine.

Pests in an ideal environment like the greenhouse can get out of hand really quickly.  Fortunately, while I was distracted in the garden, ladybugs were on scene to help clear up the problem.  There have been ladybugs hybernating in the greenhouse all winter.  With the arrival of warm temperatures, the male and female ladybugs did their thing, and now the infested plants in the greenhouse are covered with larvae ... voracious little things that eat, and eat, and eat ... and they love aphids.

Though they look spiny and scary, these little orange and black alligator-looking bugs are DEFINITELY the good guys.  The rose shoot in the photo above was particularly full of aphids, and these two little larvae babies were busily eating their fill.  (all of the white things you see are aphids they've already eaten)

I have spent the past two days in the greenhouse ... potting up the few roses that will be available in the nursery in May, and tidying up my own roses that are wintering over in there.  It was hard to keep my concentration at times, because I was so fascinated by the ladybug circle of life that was happening in that one corner.

In addition to the hoardes of larvae, I also found two pupae ... each stuck to the middle of a leaf, just like I have read that they do.

I didn't find any eggs.  Truthfully, I didn't take the time to look all that closely.  I was trying valiantly to stay on task ... to tidy up as many of the potted roses as possible.

It's weird that there is hardly an aphid to be found on any of the other roses except these few.  I'm not complaining, because these larger roses are better able to handle any damage caused by such a concentration of nasty sucking insects. 

If the aphids are still a problem when I'm finished grooming the rest of the roses in the greenhouse, I will probably have to do something about them ... capturing the ladybug larvae, washing the plants with a hose, and returning the larvae to finish off the remaining aphids.  In the meantime, I'm putting my money on the ladybugs.