Beneficial Insect Blend

I've become quite fascinateed by this whole phenomenon of growing food for the good bugs so they hang around and eat the bad bugs this year. That is what led me to purchase some 'beneficial insect blend' from Kings Seeds: This blend contains Dill, Bishops Flower, Buckwheat, Parsnip, Ammi visnaga, Fennel, Daucus carota, Phacelia, Angelica, Bergamot and Alyssum. Which all sounded completely wonderful to me. Next year I'm going to change strategy though. I have found that as I'm not familiar with many of these plants, I can't tell if they are a weed or not when I encounter them from seed. The plantings I have done in the propgator or in a pot have worked best for knowing that they are supposed to be there. My other niggle has been that it appears that really there are only two kinds of seeds germinating. But as I looked closer today, it appears that as so many of them are from the umbelliforae (or similar spelling to that) family, then they start off with very very similar leaf shapes.

So next year I am thinking I'll buy some single variety seeds of different beneficial insect attracting properties and plant them in clumps where I know what to expect. As for actually attracting lacewings, I haven't seen any so far.