How to Get Dragonflies Into Your Garden
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If mosquitoes are the reason you stop sitting outside in the evening, the thing that eats them is already in the district and the only question is whether your yard gives it a reason to stop.
They eat mosquitoes for a living
Dragonflies hunt on the wing and they are very good at it, which is why you get a noticeably quieter evening once a few of them are working your yard. And it starts before you ever see one flying, because they spend months underwater first as nymphs, eating mosquito larvae and gnats out of the water before those ever get airborne. So you are getting the problem dealt with at both ends.
What they actually want is water
Still, shallow, clean water is the whole invitation. A birdbath will do it. A half wine barrel with a couple of water plants in it will do it better. Even a wide shallow dish sitting on the ground works, and it does not need to be a pond and it does not need a pump.
And somewhere to sit
They hunt from a perch, so a few native grasses or reeds near the water, or just letting the grass around it grow a bit taller, gives them somewhere to launch from and come back to. Without a perch they will pass through. With one they tend to stay.
Keep the spray away from it
A broad spray takes out the dragonflies along with everything else, and the mosquitoes come back faster than the dragonflies do, so you end up worse off than you started. If you need to spray something, spray the actual plant with the problem on it rather than the whole yard.
One thing to watch
Standing water can breed mosquitoes as well as attract the things that eat them, so keep it shallow, top it up so it does not go stagnant, and if it is sitting for weeks untouched then tip it and refill it.
Come and have a yak with us if you want a hand working out what to put where, because the position of the water matters more than what the water is in.
Shop related products
- Multicrop EcoPest Oil Insect Spray. For when you do need to treat a specific plant rather than the whole garden.
- Brunnings Garden Compost with Seaweed 25L. For the planting around a water feature.
- Martins Organic Sugar Cane Bale 11kg. Mulch to hold moisture in the beds nearby.
Pots, water bowls and the plants to go around them are in the garden centre.
Keep reading
- How to Keep Pests Down Without Reaching for the Spray
- A Beginner's Guide to Building Good Soil for Your Vegetable Garden
Candeece. Anything that works while I sit out the back is fine by me.
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