Helpful Insects You Want In Your Tiny House Garden

Create a beautiful and eco-conscious tiny house garden, by attracting helpful insects to your place. We explain which types of insects to invite over, and how.

Believe it or not there really is a purpose for bugs in this world. They may be annoying and scary at times, but they can keep things organized and vital at the same time. Sure, there are unwanted pests that can destroy a garden in a matter of minutes, but if you have the right insects in your tiny house garden, they will work to destroy your pests for you, and keep your garden healthy and strong all year long, at no charge.

A successful garden is a place where the harmful and beneficial insects live together in harmony. So before you rush to spray the insecticide, let’s learn about which good insects prey upon the pests that destroy your prized flowers, plants, and vegetables.

Here is a list of beneficial helper insects you’ll find in your tiny house garden that you should feel proud to have as tenants, and tips for attracting them to your garden.

How to Attract Beneficial Insects to Your Tiny House Garden

Attract Good Bugs to Your Space BY…

Avoiding pesticides

To restore balance, it is important to arrange an organic garden to attract beneficial insects. These insects will destroy the pests and contribute to the development of plants, but many will die in the presence of pesticides.

Often, however, imbalances caused by pesticides, fertilizers, and other chemicals lead to an uncontrolled occurrence of pests.

Planting a diverse range of plants

To attract these garden defending bugs, be sure to include as many different kinds of plants as possible, as the diversity of the different pollens and nectars will be a magnet for a variety of beneficial bugs.

Leaving weeds alone!?!

Yes, you read right! Don’t be so quick to pull weeds. Weeds can often attract the ‘good bugs’ to your garden. Plants with umbrella shapes attract parasitoid wasps, which dine on aphids, caterpillars, and the larvae of beetles. Plants such as alyssum and catmint placed directly under rose beds attract ladybugs and lacewings.

Designer Tip: Weeds are what will give your tiny home garden an authentic cottage garden look!

Buying insects

Did you know they once let 72,000 ladybugs loose in the Mall of America! That was a pretty good idea. We let about 300 loose in our own backyard last weekend. After all, insects are an inevitable presence in any garden.

Yes, you can actually buy insects to release into your garden. Perhaps not the first thing we think of, but it is certainly a quick way to introduce beneficial insects into your tiny house garden without having to wait for the insects to naturally find your garden and establish themselves there over time. Just make sure you have a nice garden ready and waiting for them, so they are happy and want to stay.

Beneficial Insects You Want

Good Bugs vs Bad Bugs

Beneficial insects may play one of two possible roles: pollinators and predators. The first category contributes to the pollination of flowers. The insects in the second category aim at pest control and feeding on other insects, to protect your crops. 

Here is a quick summary of which insects are the best predators to wipe out those nasty pests that you want gone. Keep this list handy as a reference for when you need to call on some beneficial insect help. More about each one in the next section.

Beneficial Insects (aka Good Bugs) for Your Tiny Home

Ladybugs

These are your typical ladybugs. They have red bodies with black spots and black heads and legs. While they may seem small, cute and harmless to us, they are voracious predators of the insects you don’t want in your garden. These little babies can put away 5,000 aphids each in a lifetime (that’s 100 per HOUR). Adults eat about 100 per day. Not bad for something so tiny. Makes you feel mighty grateful for the 300 eggs that one ladybug lays in your garden during her lifetime!

As well as aphids, ladybugs also love to eat mites and the eggs of leafhoppers, mealybugs, thrips, and bollworms. They thrive on pollen and nectar too, so keep some of their favorite flowers around such as dandelions, white cosmos, yarrow, and angelica.

Praying Mantis

The name alone is enough to scare an ugly bug, and watching them catch their prey and devour them is quite entertaining. They can serve as your night watchman because they will feast on the moths, flies and mosquitoes at night. They will also eat aphids, small animals, and pretty much any insect that is within their reach because they are carnivorous in nature. Perfectly camouflaged to resemble leaves, this insect is ravenous when firstborn, and is known as a garden pest predator. Because of its large size, it kills and eats larger pests, and one of its favorites is the caterpillar.

Beneficial Nematodes

This may be the single best way to get rid of the grubs, Japanese beetles, and anything else that may be harming your garden. Because beneficial nematodes only focus on the insects in the soil, they have the ability to avoid harming the other helpful bugs that will keep your garden safe. With that in mind, they can wipe out over 200 species of harmful insects that inhabit the soil. It’s like having the mob working for you, but only in your garden.

Fly Parasites

If you have cows or any kind of animal around that produces manure, you will have annoying flies that you will need to control. Fly parasites will do the job for you, and will never harm your plants or animals. They are the size of a gnat that will eat maggots which will lower your fly population. Think of them as a natural way to avoid harmful chemicals on your property or tiny little fly swatters.

Green Lacewing

Aphids are one of the most destructive pests in any garden. Fortunately, the Green Lacewing comes to the rescue. These hardworking creatures, affectionately nicknamed “aphid lions,” devour aphids after stabbing them with their curved, sharp mandibles. Creepy, but effective! These bugs sort of look like grasshoppers, with wings. These bugs eat soft-bodied pests during all stages of their lives, from larva through adulthood. They specifically get rid of thrips, spider mites, aphids, beetles, caterpillars, and many more.

Assassin Bugs

This little killer lives up to its name and is like the 007 of beneficial garden bugs. They will do anything to capture a meal, including tricks, disguises, and sheer power. They feed on beetles, caterpillars, and anything in between. Use caution, however, when picking one up — they will bite you too, and it will hurt!

It’s part of the family Reduviidae and definitely deserves its name because it is cunning and manages to fool prey easily. The groups feed on a variety of pests from caterpillars to Colorado beetles.

Mealybug Destroyer

These bugs are actually a specific type of ladybug, and look a lot like ladybugs in shape. They have red/orange heads and black beetle-like bodies. You can use these to control three main types of mealy bugs: Nipaecoccus nipa, Planococcus citri, and Pseudococcus sp.

Minute Pirate Bug

Gardeners frequently use these bugs, also called ‘Flower Bugs’ to control pests and help crops. They are famous for eating Thrips, even adult thrips, which cause a lot of damage to crops and produce. Getting these Minute Pirate Bugs is a great idea because their diet is eating the small pests that we hate in our garden. They reproduce at fast rates, allowing them to minimize large infestations quickly. They help protect your crops against Alfalfa Weevils, Aphids, Armyworms, Asparagus Beetles, Brown Almond Mites, Thrips, Two-Spotted Spider Mites, Potato Leafhopper, Mites, Mealybugs and many more.

Mite Predator

Mite Predators are small brownish/clear looking bugs that mainly eat pollen. However, they are predators of Two-Spotted Spider Mites and have been knowing to eat the pests in their adult stages as well as eggs and in the nymph stages. They also eat other pests such as the Brown Almond Mite, Mites, and Spider Mite.

Purple Scale Predator

These bugs are small with blackish bodies and a purple-ish head. They have colored bands across their bellies. They eat both soft-bodied and hard-bodied pests that you want out of your garden. These insects protect your garden against Citrus Red Scale, Citrus Yellow Scale, and Scale insects.

Bees

These are well-known pollinators that will make their presence known in your garden if you plant flowers and vegetables. Bees love plants like cornflowers, lavender, Echinacea, sunflowers, and onions. Read more about how to attract bees for your tiny home garden here.

RELATED ARTICLE: How to Attract Bees to Your Tiny Home Garden

Cantharides

Belonging to the Cantharidae family, this beneficial insect feeds on a variety of pests in the garden, regardless of their stage (eggs, larvae). Thus, the “menu” consists of aphids, mites, Colorado beetle, cucumber beetle, cabbage butterflies, butterfly larvae, grasshoppers eggs and more. Allow them to find their place in your garden by choosing plants of the family Asteraceae.

Chrysopidae

Family Chrysopidae, order Neuroptera includes small green insects. Adult insects feed on pollen and nectar, and the larvae of Chrysopidae have an increased appetite for aphids. Chrysopidae can be kept in your garden after purchase using plants such as coriander, fennel, cosmos, daisies.

Dragonfly

Delicate, beneficial insects, dragonflies empty your garden of aphids, mosquitoes, and flies. Make sure that your garden has a container with water, or maybe an artificial fountain or pond to keep the Dragonflies, and plant small patches of herbs like cumin to provide them an even better environment.

Parasitic Wasp

Even though it may sound awkward at first, parasitic wasps may be the best choice when buying insects to let loose in your garden. Belonging to the family Trichogramma, the parasitic wasp feeds on pests that attack fruit trees like apple, walnut, and pear (peeling apple fruit worm, woolly lice, etc.) To ensure their habitation in your garden, fill it with flowers and herbs such as crocuses, cosmos, cumin, coriander, yarrow, parsley, dill.

No matter what insects you choose to buy and let loose in your garden, remember that you are doing your surrounding environment a favor. The extensive building has caused many insect species to relocate or even disappear. Buying beneficial insects, which are usually more fragile than pests will help rebalance your garden and enhance its natural beauty.

Final thoughts for your tiny house garden

When you think of bugs, you probably usually think ‘pest’. And you’re right… sometimes. Caterpillars, beetles, aphids, mites, slugs, and insect eggs are all quite harmful to gardens. But there are also many great helper insects out there just waiting to gobble up all your garden pests, without the need for insecticides and chemical pest control.

They are loyal and will work for free at any time of the day or night. These beneficial insects help your garden by working as little soldiers, constantly patrolling your plants and veggies, hunting those ‘bad bugs’ and keeping the destructive insect population to a minimum.

So, before you go to the store and spend all that money on expensive chemicals, that end up killing all the bugs, both good and bad, instead consider purchasing beneficial bugs to wipe out those nasty pests naturally instead.