"Wylie Wilde" wrote in message
...
Hello,

Does anyone know where I can buy ladybugs, dragonfly larvae and preying
mantis in Australia? I live in Victoria.

I want to try and lessen my dependence on insecticides for the garden and
try more organic solutions.

XX

this doesn't answer your immediate question because i don't know (sorry!),
however - what you should find is that once you pursue a more organic
approach, the good bugs will show up after the baddies do, because they are
their food.

when we got to our house the garden was mostly dry & dead & not much of
anything but flies & ants. once i began planting & watering the aphids &
their cronies all turned up of course, but quickly followed by hoverflies,
ladybirds, etc. the idea behind organics is that healthy, balanced soil
means healthy plants which are better able to fight disease anyway, and when
your plant-eaters inevitably come, so will their predators.

(unfortunately in practice this might not work out _exactly_ as you might
wish - being in the a.c.t., we've had a grasshopper plague all summer & i'm
sure there's many birds who'd be happy to come & eat them, but my dog has a
habit of chasing the birds away, so no help there.)

if you cannot buy baby predators easily, you can certainly buy plants which
attract certain species which would give you the same effect (but might take
longer than buying larvae).

another important idea behind organics is that you must be prepared to put
up with _some_ amount of damage from bugs you don't want, because that's
life. how much you're prepared to put up with is up to you, but that's the
nature of things, that bugs will invite themselves along. you most likely
can't achieve _total_ pest control via insect predators - some manual
management from you is always going to be involved esp. if you have
relatively high-maintenance plants; which is management against the bugs you
don't want, while allowing the good bugs to remain where they are needed.
but when the soil is good and the plants are healthy, the system should,
after a time, fall into a good balance that you can manage well without
insecticides, just predators and manual management where you feel it's
necessary.

good luck!
kylie