Backyard bugs

<p>As any public works director knows, the health and functionality of a city depends on good planning and infrastructure.</p><p>And so it is with a healthy garden. When deciding what to plant and where, think like a city planner. You don’t want only awe-inspiring architecture, parks and candy stores.</p><p>Who will inhabit your garden? What kind of residents do you want to attract to your new community? If you answered bugs, bees, bats, butterflies and birds, you’re on the right track. And just as you would in a real city, you’ll need to provide the equivalent of housing developments for shelter, supermarkets for healthy eating and reservoirs of water for drinking and cleaning. And don’t forget, any safe city needs strong law enforcement.</p><p>For a lesson in how to create a vibrant insect community in your own back yard, plan a visit to Benziger Winery. For years the Glen Ellen winery flanking Jack London State Park has been committed not just to organic grape-growing but also biodynamic farming, a holistic approach to farming that embraces composting, biodiversity, recycling, use of grazing animals and cover crops.</p><p>And a critical component of both practices — which includes growing without pesticides and herbicides — is putting Mother Nature’s critters to work for you.</p><p>At the winery on Sonoma Mountain are a series of “insectary gardens” and flyways carefully created to attract beneficial bugs, who will in turn drive out the bad ones.</p><p>On Earth Day in April, Benziger opened a new Biodiversity Trail to explain and demonstrate its farming practices. And a key part of that outdoor museum is a demonstration insectary garden to showcase some of the plants carefully selected to provide pollen and habitat for the predator insects Benziger wants to put to work for its vineyards.</p><p>The winery at first hired an entomologist to identify the diseases and pests that plagued the vineyard. Then it hired a horticulturist knowledgable in viticulture to select plants that would draw the right insects.</p><p>There are more than 50 types of plants in the insectaries, represented by three main families of plants: sunflowers, carrots and legumes. All provide both food and shelter for the insects the winery needs to provide the right balance of predator and prey.</p><p>A gently winding path leads through a forest of tall and densely packed plants and grasses. Moonshine yarrow, Russian sage, euphorbia, and gracefully waving stalks of Miscanthus (ornamental grasses) beckon beneficial critters like ladybugs, assassin bugs, lacewings, syrphid flies, minute pirate bugs and parasitic wasps, said Colby Eierman, the former director of the gardens at Copia who has overseen Benziger’s insectaries for the past 18 months.</p><p>These predators in turn, will go after the vineyard pests.</p><p>For instance, the short-bodied green lacewings will eat aphids, said Eierman, who grew up not far away on Sonoma Mountain and has a degree in landscape architecture from the University of Oregon. But they also will dine on white flies, thrips and mites, all destructive to grapevines.</p><p>Good bugs also are soldier beetles, Western predatory mites and red predatory mites.</p><p>These beneficial insects will go after glassy-winged sharpshooters, the western flower thrip, black aphids, white flies and leaf hoppers.</p><p>“All of these guys for the most part are taking nutrients away from the plants. They’re a lot of sucking insects,” Eierman said. Consider aphids. They gather on the underside of leaves “and suck the nutrients right out of the veins of the plant like a vampire,” he added.</p><p>Certain plants do attract specific beneficials. So when planning any organic garden, you want to know what pests the plants you choose might draw, and then select other plants that will attract the right predators.</p><p>For instance, Queen Anne’s Lace attracts lacewings. Dandelions draw ladybugs. Hoverflies dine on Gloriosa daisies.</p><p>The whole concept is built on the premise put forth in the concept, “If you build it, they will come.” That means, said Eierman, creating many well-planned communities of insect-friendly plants connected by corridors or “bug highways” of additional plants that enable the bugs to get around easily with places to alight.</p><p>“You build these threads of habitat for those insects to get out into the vineyard because they don’t travel as far as you’d like them to,” he explained. “You have to think about the vineyard a little differently and build that infrastucture so they can get around, like a highway system.”</p><p>That same principle can be applied in any backyard setting. You want not only to mass plants that attract beneficials, but also to make sure that that these habitats are spread throughout your landscape and near any plants that might be prone to pests.</p><p>Benziger has been committed to what is called Integrated Pest Management for more than 20 years. Over time they have developed a number of insectary gardens throughout their 85 acres, including a terraced vineyard of zinfandel along which are planted a mixture of olives, lavender, echium, bottle brush and flowering plants like calendula and California poppies — all attractive to beneficials.</p><p>“We have quite a diverse mix of non-grapevine plants throughout the vineyards. It’s a real blending of nature,” said Eierman, stressing that only half the estate is planted in vines.</p><p>The beauty of their insectary gardens is their wildness. They don’t look planned. Every inch is covered with what appears to be a disparate array of shrubs and grasses that flower at different times. Although it may look unplanned, it is not.</p><p>Angelica attracts the predatory chalsid wasp. Tansy, a bright green ornamental herb with feathery leaves and yellow flowers, attracts lacewings. Minute pirate bugs like the asters. And one of the staples — a big truck stop, if you will, on the insect flyway — is yarrow. The big umbrella-like flowers are like a welcoming landing pad, Eierman said, and are a particular favorite of hoverflies.</p><p>“They’re really easy for the bugs to see and find. It’s like a neon sign with an arrow pointing, ‘FOOD,’” he said.</p><p><i>You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com.</i></p>