[loopy]

Hi there..i have loads of spiders who seem to spin webs on all my climbing plants constantly. Are spiders good or bad to have in the garden? Im under the impression they eat a lot of the small insects but do they do any actual damage to plants? Thnks!

[GPI]

Spiders are in your garden to scare the beyjesus out of you.

I jest of course, spiders are in your garden not to eat your plants, but rather to eat other insects among your plants.

They will eat both good and bad garden insects, but they feast mostly on annoying beetles and flies. At night their webs catch the nocturnal moths that often lay their eggs on your plants.

Often our gardens have very few spiders to catch the bad insects due to our liberal use of insecticides and other sprays. There is a delicate natural balance in the garden, if we can achieve it then the insects seem to regulate themselves.
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[loopy]

Thanks GPI..I've loads of spiders..I dont use insecticides at all so maybe thats why!!

[birdie]

Your spiders will also create webs that get frosted in cold weather.
These look magical, another garden feature I suppose.

[Bugs]

Lovely idea Birdie , A frosted cobweb glittering a morning alive , if only people would take the time to stop and look .
Bugs
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[sleepy]

Hi Loopy. I have spiders too, and as long as they don't bite I usually leave them alone. We have a pretty crab spider that spins huge webs from my trees to the ground, and they give me nasty painful bites, so I usually catch them and squash them. My other spiders though, so far I leave alone because they don't hurt me. I'm stuck a bit on the crab spiders that sit on my flowers and wait for butterflies; I caught one eating one of my butterflies so I'm tempted to take them out too, but I've left them alone so far except that one I found eating my butterfly.

Birdie, yes, the webs are fabulous. I'm too far south for frost (which I DO miss!) but the morning dew decorates them in a lovely manner as well, although not as pretty as the words you used to describe them! I tried to post a picture I took last month of a spider web I found on my way to work, but I'm not sure how to get the picture to show here. Post back directions if it didn't work and I'll try again.

[sleepy]

Yeah, it worked! I didn't see the image in the preview, so I wasn't sure it would. The crab spider that bites is the one with the red spines on this page: http://butterflies.heuristron.net/others/spiders.html
and there are little pictures of all the other spiders that have stayed still long enough for me to get my camera and get back to them there too.