What's going on everyone? Welcome back to the Epic Gardening Show. Today is our final

episode with Jessica Walliser, been having a fantastic time with her in the

podcast. She's the author of attracting beneficial bugs to your

garden, a natural approach to pest control. So if you've been listening to this

week's episodes, you probably have come away with a much deeper understanding of just how the

bugs in your garden are interacting with each other.

But one thing that we talked about a little bit and we don't yet or at least I certainly don't yet have a really good understanding of is you know let's say that I do see some aphids in my garden and I've decided to leave them and wait for the predatory insects to come around and sort of start working upon them, start feasting on them and just watch that ecosystem play out.

How does that actually happen? and just watch that ecosystem play out.

How does that actually happen from the bugs perspective, Jessica?

It's pretty crazy, actually, Kevin,

and it's really exciting.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about this topic because it's one that I don't get to cover very often, but yet it's one that is the most fascinating to me.

And so let's say, let's go to this this example we talked in the last episode about those

imported cabbage worms on your cabbage plant right they're eating your cabbage

plant and as they're eating the cabbage plant the cabbage plant is releasing a series of

volatile chemicals into the air or odors right that are called herbivore induced

plant volatels HIPVs is what they call them, abbreviated, and it releases these

volatile chemicals into the air that serve as a cue, as an olfactory cue, right,

a scent cue to this predatory insects that are most likely to prey upon that cabbage worm.

So in this case, what they've done most of the tests on are parasitic wasps.

So which species of parasitic wasp is going to come and help you control those cabbage worms

by laying eggs in them, right?

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