Lady beetles or ladybird beetles are very familiar and widely recognized predators of garden pests. Their phylum is Arthropoda, Class: Insecta; Order: Coleoptera; and Family: Coccinellidae. True bugs have sucking mouth parts, to extract juices from plants, but lady beetles, being predators, have chewing apparatus, so are not classified as bugs. They feed on soft-bodied
The winter seems to drag on and on this time of year for the avid gardeners in Southern Ontario who can hardly wait to get outside to work at one of their favorite hobbies. But don’t despair, there is a very pleasant way to extend our all too short growing season by starting your own
Climate change is the challenge of the century. You hear about it, read about it, worry about it. Rising global temperatures are caused by our overuse of fossil fuels in combination with widespread destruction of forests, grasslands, peat bogs and other flora. The average temperature of Earth is rising because our polluted atmosphere traps heat
Updated July 26 2021 Looking for native plants? Check out these suppliers!
Check out the video from the Nature Conservancy of Canada on planting native plants.
Here are some fantastic resources from the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority. If you are looking to plant native flowers, trees, or prairie plants in the Stratford area, these resources will be a great start! There are also resources on invasive plants and butterfly larvae host plants.
This is a summary of a video posted on YouTube by Doug Tallamy, an entomologist and author of Nature’s Best Hope. You are nature’s best hope. There are millions of specialized interactions in nature. For example more than half of insects are pollen specialists. That means they can only access pollen from one particular family
Interested in purchasing native plants? See that attached document (revised from the earlier version) for a list of “local-ish” sources for native plants.
Jim Fitzgerald has shared the presentation he made to the Stratford Horticultural Society. Lots of good stuff in this 30 minute presentation!
If you were told that beaver, bees, an oak tree and a purple sea star were keystone species, you might wonder, “What does that mean?” Simply stated, this means that each of these species fills a critical niche in its ecosystem which no other species can. This makes them vital to the function of the