creepier than heading out to check your garden at night and catch the glimpse of a bat in midflight? Bats are great for reducing the insect population in your garden and there are several scented plants that will attract the insects that bats love:
Evening Primrose (a beautiful yellow flowered North American native biennial plant)
Night-Scented Stock
Nicotiana (many to chose from and one of my favorite annual plants)
Moonflowers (easy to grow vine with a lovely scent that opens at night)
Night Phlox
Honeysuckle
Four-o-clocks
Salvia
herbs like: Lemon Balm, Mint, Marjoram,Lavender,Thyme,and Sage
Bat also like a shelter or home, if they can get in the eaves of your house can take refuse in your attic, so give them someplace to harbor in your garden. Bat houses are available from many birdhouse shops. Be patient with your bat house, sometimes it will take several years for the bats to take up residence.
They will also reside in tree and sometimes in ivy or other vines. Dead trees provide plenty of insects for food and roosting spots for the bats.
You will also need some type of water source, larger than a bird bath, a small pond is best, although fountains can work, bats (and insects) prefer the still water.
Leave a light on to attract insects, I have several solar lights that come on at night out in my garden and it seems to do the trick.
If you have bats and other natural insect predators, you will have less need for pesticides. If you want to attract bats to your garden, do not use pesticides as many of them are harmful to bats and most other wildlife.
Happy National Donut Day from the Davis Graveyard
4 months ago
When I was a kid, they lived behind the shutters on the house. My mom would make my sibling and I hold out a blanket, stick a stick behind the shutter and frighten them out around dusk. I can't believe we did this on many levels; rabies (they usually landed on us), disrupting their habitate (would you move a blind person to a new location?)... Well, out here in the west we love our bats--they are what propogate our cacti!
ReplyDeleteWe enjoy watching them at twilight in the summer. Our yard is not that buggy thanks to the bats and frogs.
ReplyDeleteWe don't see many bats around the yard. But we have a ridiculous number of spiders. They do a good job with the insects. Them and the wind :)
ReplyDeleteWe have a large number of bats that live in our area.
ReplyDeleteWe have a bat house up but they prefer to roost in one of my Hubby's shops.