Good for the Earth, Great for Your Garden!

Mother Earth Farm wants its plants to be healthy, beautiful, and good for the planet. So we've been working closely with Bugological to use beneficial insects instead of pesticides to keep our plants looking great. Some of the beneficial insects you might find in our greenhouses include:

  • Ladybugs - These well-known beneficials eat aphids and other soft-bodied pests including scales, mealy bugs, leaf hoppers, and mites.
  • Parasitic Wasps - These tiny wasps do not sting humans, but the two varieties we release kill whiteflies and aphids, respectively.
  • Pirate Bugs - These common black beetles eat mites, thrips, aphids, and small caterpillars.
  • Nematodes - These microscopic insects kill a large variety of soil-dwelling pests.
  • Amblyseius Cucumeris - These small mites control thrips in the greenhouse.
  • Praying Mantis - This amazing hunter consumes aphids, leafhoppers, mosquitoes, caterpillars and other soft-bodied insects when young. Later they eat larger insects, beetles, grasshoppers, crickets, and other pest insects.

For more information about these insects or our program, please take a look at our Beneficial Insect FAQ (PDF).

For More Information

Here are some additional resources to help you find answers to your gardening questions:

Some Common Greenhouse Terms

Cuttings - Taking pieces of a plant, treating them with rooting hormone and then placing in dirt. This is a way of propagating many plants such as fuchsia and ivy. After taking the cuttings the plants go onto the heat bench to hopefully grow roots.

Seeding - We seed hundreds of seeds at one time. We use a "seed" tray a large tray and make furrows with a bamboo stick. We unusually seed 11 rows per tray and each row holds hundreds of seeds depending on the variety of plant. The seeds are watered and covered with a plastic dome. Then they sit on our heat bench to germinate.

Heat Bench - A greenhouse bench equipped with hot water tubes to keep the cuttings or seedlings warm and growing at optimum temperatures.

Transplanting - When the seedlings pop up they need more room to grow. For things that are sold in packs they get transplanted right into the pack. For plants that are sold in larger containers such as pots and nursery pots they will go into a pack and then "potted up" later.

Potted up - Taking a plant and putting into a larger pot or container.