Soldier beetle larvae: Not really bad bugs
You can always tell where the
most luscious fruits are in my garden because these velvety black,
beetle larva soon show up to drink the juices. The scientific
community claims that soldier beetle larvae suck the liquids out of
other insects' eggs and young, but the fuzzy baby beetles clearly like
sugar water too.
In my early days on the
farm, I'd be tempted to dub these guys "bad bugs". But the truth is
that battling insects is a thankless project --- it's much more fun to
tweak ecosystems into balance so no one is really bad.
In fact, soldier beetles
are on most gardeners' list of good bugs since they'll chow down on
cucumber beetles, caterpillars, grasshopper eggs, aphids, and other
troublesome denizens of the garden. And the beetle larvae really
don't hit my raspberries unless I forget to pick for a day or so, at
which point the fruits are winey anyway. Plus, soldier beetle
larvae are a very clear indicator of exactly when
to pick a ripe fig!
Yep, after a week or two
off, the next round of figs are starting to plump up and droop
down. Good thing too since I've been literally dreaming about
roast figs --- they're that good.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Talk about being in sync. This weekend I extended the height of 3 of my garden beds. While digging, I came across some of these velvety black "worms." I didn't know what they were, and figured I'd look them up today. Lo and behold this post in Google Reader. Luckily I didn't kill them. I've learned over the past couple of years to not kill bugs before I find out what they are.
Thanks for the post