How to Attract Ladybugs to Your Yard

Ladybugs are essential to have around if you wish to keep Aphids and other plant pests off your precious roses or out of your garden. By building this simple ladybug house you can attract ladybugs to your yard or if you release ladybugs they will be much more likely to stick around.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• sharp knife
• hot glue gun with glue sticks or Elmers glue.
• scrap cardboard
• small nail or brad or even twist ties to secure finished house to protected areas of your garden.

1. 
   Cut cardboard with a sharp knife. You don't have to get things perfect, aproximations will do just fine.

   Using sharp knife cut cardboard into several 5x7 inch pieces. You will also want to cut twice as many strips of cardboard that are 1 inch wide by 5 inches long. For each ladybug house you will also want to cut 1 piece that is at least 11x7 this will be the outer covering to the house.

2. 
   Fold then glue your longest piece of cardboard. It will be the outer cover to your ladybug house.

   Starting with your 11x7 piece you will make 1 fold at 7 inches then make another fold 2 inches further down. This will be the back of your ladybug house.
   
   Using the hot glue gun you will glue the fold together so that it will give you a 2 inch lip at the top of the ladybug house for the hanger.

3. 
   alternate layers between the two thin strips and the larger pieces to form pockets between the cardboard sheets.

   Next take two of the 1 inch wide strips and glue them on each side of the framing for the cardboard house you are going to make. Then glue one of the 5x7 pieces over the top of the frame you just made.

4. 
   This is what the bottom will look like when you are finished. The ladybugs will crawl up in-between the pieces of cardboard and sleep in the spaces. Several ladybugs can sleep in one ladybug house!

   repeat above till you have 4 layers of 5x7 cardboard on your ladybug house. Glue 2 more 1 inch strips and then fold the remaining piece of cardboard from the back over the front folding to cover as necessary, then glue into place.

5. Using the tab you made at the top on the back of your ladybug house you will attach it to protected areas around your garden. Ladybugs will forage for aphids during the day when it is warm, and retire to your ladybug houses at night.

Tips & Warnings

• When you release ladybugs into your garden, you will want to do so during the early part of the day when it is just starting to warm up.
• Release ladybugs near your ladybug houses.
• Do not disturb ladybug houses once they are put in their permanent places, disturbing them will cause the ladybugs to not feel secure and seek other accommodations.
• For the first few days do not leave out deep trays of water or ladybugs may drown when trying to drink.

Resources

• meetups.com going green with sustainable aquaponics
• Code 3 offers discounted merchandise to police and fire personell

[betterbody]

on 5/9/2009 Good details on attracting ladybugs.