These days, not even a backyard garden is free from danger. The vegetables and flowers over which you've labored so lovingly are prey for aphids, cutworms, mealy bugs, and many others.

What to do? Using chemical pesticides is so last century. We now know that broad spectrum conventional pesticides not only kill the bad bugs, they rub out the good ones as well. Without natural predators in our gardens, it's a world of insects gone wild. In fact, more and more insects are showing resistance to heavy duty chemical pesticides. In a controlled experiment, fruit flies were exposed to DDT. Not only did it not kill them, the fruit flies had developed a way to metabolize the pesticide and use it as food!

If you've ever read a newspaper, a web blog, or watched tv, you know how vitally important it is to eat safe food. No matter how carefully you wash your vegetables that have been treated with chemicals, there is no guarantee that they don't still contain traces.

What to do? Go natural! Fight bugs with bugs! Beneficial insects are the latest fad in fighting the bad bugs in your garden. Take for example, the common green lacewing (Chrysoperla carnea). Actually, take the offspring of this “aphid lion”; the adult lays her eggs on the foliage, each on the top of hair-like filaments. In a few days, the lacewing eggs hatch and the tiny larvae emerge with their voracious appetites for aphids, spider mites and red mites, thrips, whiteflies, long-tailed mealy bugs, the eggs of leafhoppers, moths and leafminers, small caterpillars, beetle larvae and tobacco budworms. Whew!

The larvae look like miniature alligators with tiny ice tong-like pincers that inject paralyzing venom. They then draw out the bodily fluids of their victim. Hey. We didn't say that controlling the bad bugs in your gardens was a pretty thing. We just want you to know that there are safer and more naturally effective options to dealing with pests.

It's become quite a business selling these mighty defenders of the healthy garden. Green lacewing larvae can be released on numerous plants such as cotton, sweet corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, apples and strawberries. About 10 lacewing eggs per plant, or 1,000 eggs per 200 sq. ft. will control a moderate aphid population. During the two to three weeks in the larvae stage they will each devour up to 200 victims a week. After this, they pupate by spinning a cocoon with silken thread and approximately five days later the adults emerge to complete the life cycle. There are five or six overlapping generations each season. Since the larvae feed for about two weeks, a second release, two weeks later, might be necessary.

Chrysoperla carnea, the “original” green lacewing just may prove to be the best all-purpose predator for your home garden.

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