Ladybug Benefits Pt 1
With today's Fruit Grower Report, I'm Bob Larson. Many children think of them as the absolute cutest of the insect family, but they are also a ruthless killer that can play a big roll in keeping your orchard healthy. Northwest Beneficials' Chris Morris says his company distributes ladybugs to Northwest growers every year ...MORRIS ... "We start off in the spring shipping our ladybugs for aphid control to a lot of fruit orchards in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. So, we're going to be taking our first loads out, in fact, for the early applications all over Central Washington."
And who uses the ladybugs? Who are your customers? ...
MORRIS ... "We ship to several large growers and they typically grow apples, pears and cherries and, one of them in particular, has one farm that also does blueberries. And so, they apply them to all of them and they are very effective on their fruits and they just love them."
So Chris, what do the ladybugs do?
MORRIS ... "Primarily, they attack aphids. They attack the live adults and the eggs. Some are live born, but they attack them all. And of course, what the aphids do is they attack the foliage, primarily the new foliage on the fruit trees, and literally suck the sap out of the plants and diminish the quality and size and quantity of the fruit that is being produced."
Morris says ladybugs eat dozens of pests per day as an adult and lay eggs throughout the season.
Listen tomorrow for more on the benefits of those cute little ladybugs.