While Earth Day was April 22nd, the celebrations extended for the entire week. One Northern California Elementary School celebrated the event by releasing 100,000 ladybugs into the school's organic garden.

On the morning of April 24th, the mood at Edna Maguire Elementary School was very festive. Students, parents and teachers, dressed in ladybug colors, gathered at the school's 1/3-acre organic garden. Once every student had a bag of crawling ladybugs, the countdown began. With parents and teachers cheering on, they carefully cut open the bags and sprinkled the bugs onto their respective classroom garden sections.

The garden soon echoed with squeals of delight as the little creatures crawled on the kid's necks, shirts and hair. While the joy the ladybugs provided the children was immeasurable, they were brought to the garden for a very important purpose.

Ladybugs are the world's most effective and natural predators. Each ladybug is capable of eating between 50 - 60 aphids a day and adult ladybugs can consume over 5,000 aphids during their lifetime (6-8 weeks). Aphids are small insects that damage plants by sucking the juice out from the leaves. They also transmit plant diseases from one plant to another.

Apart from aphids, ladybugs also eat other harmful insects like leafhoppers and mealy bugs. Also, while they have a short lifespan, female ladybugs are capable of laying over 50 eggs a day, ensuring that there is always another batch of ladybugs ready to attack predators.

Therefore, adding ladybugs to gardens alleviates the need to spray plants with harmful pesticides. Needless to say, ladybugs are very welcome additions to any garden and are often known as "a gardener's best friend". And of course as we all know, ladybugs bring good luck!

The event sponsored by Sloat Gardens and The Loop, 24 Hour Fitness, was organized by Lee Budish, a firm believer in organic farming. Ms. Budish, who is a parent at the school and spearheads the volunteer-operated school garden, started this event for her son's kindergarten class in 1999. Since 2007, with the help of corporate sponsors, the ladybug release has become a fun and educational event for the entire school.

Enjoy the wonderful video of the event from www.cowboylukeproductions.com

Sources:

Lee Budish