As more and more people are learning about the important role insects play in our food chain, many are wondering what they can do or perhaps what they should stop doing to help encourage insect development in their landscape. Fortunately, there are a variety of things we can do and most of them really don’t require much from us. In some instances, we might even be grateful we don’t need to continue many of the year’s end garden traditions we have picked up. Let’s talk about some of those.

Insects are a near constant companion for gardeners whether you are tending to flowers or vegetables. But the question arises “where do those insects go in the winter?” Most of us are familiar with the migration story of the monarch butterfly so it’s easy to assume most insects must migrate to a warmer climate during the winter, but the reality is that most insects overwinter in the same locations they live during the summer. However, this depends on whether they can find an appropriate place to seek refuge from the cold. Overwintering sites might include stems and branches of trees, shrubs, flowers, leaf litter, dead wood, rock piles, or brush piles.

One of the first things we can do to encourage insects in general is to utilize native plants in our landscape. On average we probably have about 20% native plants and 80% non-native plants in our gardens. A better plan would be to reverse this by having 80% native plants and 20% non-native plants. Native insects have thrived over the centuries by utilizing and depending on plants that are native to the area in which they live. So, the presence of these native plants will be the first step in increasing your local insect population.

A good analogy for this might be when you are on a road trip across the country. When it gets to be lunch time and your stomach starts rumbling, you likely start looking for someplace to eat you are familiar with from back home rather than seeking out something you are not familiar with. The reason is that you are hungry now, and the familiar is the best bet. Maybe later when you reach your destination, you’ll dip your toe into sampling unfamiliar cuisine, but initially, the familiar tends to win out. This is the same for insects. When they are searching for nectar or pollen, first on their list is going to be something they are familiar with. Maybe they sample some others along the way, but it’s hard to beat a dependable, familiar meal. So, start by increasing the quantity of native plants in your landscape.

Next, at the end of the growing season, make it a practice to leave the stalks and seed heads of your plants in place rather than cutting them down and cleaning up your garden. Since stems and stalks of pithy plants serve as overwintering sites for a variety of insects, leaving the dead stems on plants until spring will provide a winter home for a variety of pollinating insects. You can trim these stems back in the spring after you begin to see bees flying around. Then as you begin to prune back the dead stems, don’t prune them down to the ground at first. Prune the dead stems to various heights of between 8 and 24 inches. These cut ends will provide entry points for insects looking for a place to nest. New growth will grow past these dead stems and the stems you have left will hopefully become nesting sites for insects.

We talked about this before, but it’s also a good idea to leave as many of the fallen leaves as you can. This is going to be a hard sell in our yards since a thick layer of leaves can kill the grass underneath. But there’s no reason not to leave the fallen leaves on your garden beds. This leaf debris will help provide overwintering sites for the vast majority of butterflies and moths. In addition to helping out overwintering insects, you’ll also be encouraging the development of other animals such as lace bugs, snails, beetles, worms, millipedes, spiders, and mites to name a few. These can serve as food for a variety of other animals. Biodiversity is the key to a healthy ecosystem.

Also, rather than hauling off all your trimmings from shrubs and trees that can build up during the growing season, maybe create a pile of debris in your yard. These brush piles will not only provide an overwintering location for insects but will provide birds with a place in which to seek shelter from a storm. Don’t pack it too tightly because you want plenty of air space.

If you are feeling adventurous, a decaying brush pile is a great place to start a hugelkultur garden. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a centuries old technique in which new gardens are built on top of decaying debris. You can do an internet search for hugelkultur for more information.

Rock pikes or rock walls also create places for insects to call home as the make their homes in the crevices of holes in the rocks. Placing a few wildflowers around your rock pile wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

In reality, there are a lot of really small things we can do to encourage the population growth of our pollinating insects. Many of which involve us doing less in the garden and I’m a fan of that. See you in the garden!

You can get answers to all your gardening questions by calling the Tulsa Master Gardeners Help Line at 918-746-3701, dropping by our Diagnostic Center at 4116 E. 15th Street, or by emailing us at mg@tulsamastergardeners.org. Photo OSU Ag. Comm.