Wednesday, November 21, 2007

God's Natural Pest Control: Stink Bugs

From Creation Moments

The world originally created by God was perfect in every respect. However, among the consequences of sin mentioned in Genesis 3, are the thorns and thistles, which make man's agriculture more difficult. We could certainly classify insect pests in the same category as noxious weeds.

However, God did not leave us without earthly solutions to these problems. Modern agriculture has relied largely on powerful herbicides and insecticides to protect crops from pests. At the same time, God's design of nature has always included more natural, less toxic ways of controlling pests. Modern science is learning how to use the same methods God uses to control insects.

The spined soldier bug, also known as the stink bug, is one of God's natural controllers of insect pests. The stink bug eats over a hundred different kinds of insect pests, including some of the worst such as the cotton boll worm and the gypsy moth.

Researchers have found that spraying a crop with natural attractant, produced by the stink bug, serves as a call to dinner. Stink bugs naturally move in and begin devouring harmful pests without damaging the crop. Since the stink bug attractant is a naturally-produced chemical, it does no harm to nature before it breaks down.

Our Creator's solutions to problems are always better than ours.

Listen to an audio version at Creation Moments.

5 comments:

pixelform said...

I have the opposite problem. There is a huge green stink bug infestation in my garden and I am at a loss for natural control. My location is Southern California in the arid hills north of Los Angeles. I need to figure out how to get rid of these guys before he weather gets cold and they decide to more inside. So far I haven't found a natural method of controlling them. Any ideas?

sharingsunshine said...

Our Virginia resource says the most important natural enemies of stink bugs are a few species of parasitic wasps that attack eggs. These help to reduce the numbers of nymphs occurring on plants. Also, some botanical insecticide dusts will control stink bugs.

AskTheExterminator.com had this info:

Stink bugs have built up a resistance to some pesticides. So, you need to try a different approach. First, get rid of as many weeds as possible. Stink bugs will hide in weeds. So, if you are only spraying your garden plants you are not hitting the stink bugs.

Next, let's think about some alternative treatments. There are some good articles about kaolin clay treatments on the web. This spray mixture coats the plants and is supposed to protect them from a wide variety of insect pests.

Neem is a botanical insecticide derived from a tree native to the Middle East carried by lawn and garden stores. EcoSmart carries an entire line of non-toxic products made with clove oil and the like, available on line.

Your local lawn and garden store also has a supply of organic soaps that can help. I also like the concept of trap cropping which involves planting strips of other stink bug host plants around the edges of gardens or crops to be protected. For example, a tomato crop might be protected by growing a rows of okra or sunflowers along the garden edges. This is supposed to lure the stink bugs away from the valued tomatoes.

Unknown said...

How did the stink bugs get here?

sharingsunshine said...

I guess they got here when God created them?

Anonymous said...

I'm in the middle of building a house in Pennsylvania and of course stink bugs invaded, but so did spiders. During a pause in building works the spiders' webs were totally left alone and now below each web is a large pile of dried out stink bugs which have been captured, eaten and discarded from the webs by my new spidery friends. I can't specify the spider type(s) but the webs are constructed more like random silk tumbleweeds than traditional webs... if that helps!

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