Make your own catchy hotel
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If you hang up a catchy hotel, you can specifically encourage the aphid hunters in your garden. With these instructions, you can make the catchy tune for the catchy tunes yourself.
anyone who wants to practice biological plant protection can specifically promote catchy tunes - with a catchy tune hotel.
The beneficial insects can take their nightly prey from this hotel.
Because at night the earworm, in the vernacular frequently also ear pinchers mentioned, hunts plant lice of each kind, small caterpillars and earth fleas.
In the garden, the most common catchy tuna is Forficula auricularia.
It reaches a body length of about one and a half centimeters and is colored in a dark reddish brown.
Characteristic are the pincers on the abdomen, where the sexes are also distinguished: With the female they are tweezer-like narrow, with the male they are more strongly bent.
Earwigs usually spend the winter in a hiding place on the ground.
In the spring, they then crawl onto woody plants and perennials and look for aphids and their eggs at night.
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Fotolia/M.R. Swadzba When night falls, the catchy tune goes hunting for aphids, caterpillars and other pests |
On soft-skinned fruits such as grapes or peaches, the catchy tune can certainly cause damage if it occurs in masses.
On apple trees and other woods, however, the sociable animal makes itself earned as an industrious aphid hunter.
If one finds it in the core of an apple, it usually follows the maggot of the codling moth there - it itself cannot penetrate the hard apple skin.
Why is a catchy hotel useful?
Plant damage can be avoided by offering the earwigs a home.
Flower pots filled with wood wool have proven to be a good choice for catchy tunes.
Once the catchy tunes have found their daytime hiding place,
they can be transported to the trees or beds where there are enough aphids to eat.
Step by step: Make your own catchy hotel
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| Photo: MSG/Frank Schuberth |
01 Manufacturing suspension for clay pot
A rope serves as suspension for the clay pot.A short piece of branch is attached to one end, the other end is threaded through the hole.
02 Fill pot with hay
Then the pot is filled with dry hay - alternatively with straw or wood wool.
03 Fix hay in the pot
Clamp the material in the clay pot with another stick.
04 Hang up catchy hotel
Then hang the filled catchy hotel upside down on the trunk of a fruit tree.
How do you hang up the catchy hotel properly?
The clay pots filled with wood wool are hung upside down.
They should be placed in a shady place and have contact with the tree trunk or a branch if possible - this gives the earwigs direct access from their nesting aid to their prey (aphids, mites) on the wood.
Caution: Earwigs are omnivores! To ensure that they do not eat the eggs and larvae or the pollen supply of wild bees,
they are not placed near such nesting aids.
The catchy tuna feeds mainly on aphids, mites and their eggs,
but in dry periods it also likes to eat the leaves and fruits of plums, peaches and grapes.
Even the flowers of some ornamental plants like chrysanthemums, zinnias and dahlias are nibbled.
The food-damages are admittedly rather insignificant in the comparison to the benefit of the insect,
with longer persistent sun-weather, catchy-worm hotels should be removed from the proximity of ripe fruits in time, however.
Earwigs don't crawl into ears, by the way, in order to maltreat humans with its pincers.
But the legend persists, and it is certainly also a reason why the sight of a ladybug brings more joy to most gardeners than that of a catchy tune.
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