All about fireflies! Create habitat that attracts lightning bugs to your yard. 

Hi Margaret, thank you for commenting. Yes, it is very important that gardeners not clean up their gardens until well into the spring. This protects fireflies and many other insects, allowing them to complete their life cycles.

LOL, let's bring back the Glow Worm!

I have a collection of toy glow worms 🤩 still wish for plenty in my garden

Thank you for commenting, I'm sorry you no longer see them. Habitat destruction is a huge threat to them.

That’s a lot of feelings not about fireflies, they’re in my backyard rn here in orlando.

Thank you for commenting, fireflies are magical and I hope you get to see more of them!

Holy mother of fireflies give this man some attention

Love those fireflies!

Absolutely, nothing more magical than fireflies!

Thanks so much for commenting, glad you enjoyed it!

Hi Nancy, so glad it was helpful! Thanks for making your garden more eco-friendly!

You are so welcome!

Hi Terri, thank you for helping our fireflies!

Terri Stauffer@ u Lucky bastard

Thanks for commenting! Glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you! So happy to hear from viewers who find the videos helpful!

Thanks for your comment, I understand that people are very busy and try to provide the most important information in the shortest time possible.

Thank you for commenting, they are magical for many reasons, please release them when you are done observing them.

Correct, they don't eat specific plants, it's about using plants to create and protect their habitat and not causing harm by disturbing the soil and leaving lights on at night.

They eat small soft bugs or nectar. So if they aren’t killing aphids, they are pollinating

I can do without the June bugs. It's like little intoxicated airplanes buzzing about. God forbid one gets in the house while you are sleeping. 😂

When it comes to gardening, being too neat kills our insects.

Hi. I am not familiar with fireflies in Texas as Native Plant Channel focuses on the northeast and mid-Atlantic, but this might help you: www.firefly.org/field-guides/texas-fireflies/

I'm not sure why you couldn't start a firefly population in your extremely large yard, or even just the half that's fenced off? Even if you live on an HOA property, you should be able to create the garden you want within your fenced area. If I were you, I would first have a large load of woodchips dropped off by an arborist who is cutting, and mulching trees in the area. Just get as many loads as you can!! Then I would spread those chips so they stayed very deep, at least 6 inches throughout the gardens. (That's assuming you have mostly dry weather ) If your weather doesn't bring much rain, any help from you in keeping the underlying layers of woodchips moist is going to be key! For instance, if you're REALLY dry, you may even need to have a deeper woodchip layer than 6", just to keep the lowest layers moist. You'll need to experiment. If you have trees, putting the woodchips under the dripline of the tree canopy will help both the tree, and the eventual coming of the fireflies. It will probably take time, maybe even a handful of years before you see the results you're looking for. Just don't give up!! One tip: Don't pile woodchips up next to any tree trunk, or crown of a plant. If you do that, they'll rot. The large amount of woodchips will generate all kinds of insect life that wasn't there before! This is the beginning of the wildlife coming into your yard. Any leaf litter added to the woodchips is also a great thing to add. If you don't have leaf litter now, planting certain types of plants that grow large amounts of leaf material for the soul purpose of "chop & drop" will be a very good move on your part. This would be a plant for the purpose of making mulch. For example: A Canna, which grows quickly & easily, and has very large leaves. Then you come and chop a few leaves off, then use those leaves as mulch by simply tearing them up a bit, then tossing them on the ground to become a mulch layer. That's Chop n Drop. As for the bees, just keep trying! Don't give up!! You have enough room to grow a whole lot of pollinator plants! Have you tried throwing out seeds for wildflowers? Plenty of pollinator insects will travel for miles looking for pockets of wildflowers during their bloom periods. Apparently, the bees just need time to find you!! Once they do find you, they'll keep coming back. There are many, many, many types of local bees that are not honey bees. Lots of singular bees (Bees that don't live in hives) need places to live near their pollen & nectar sources. Research how to make a bug hotel. That info is easy to find, especially here on You Tube. Offering these hotel rooms in your gardens, to bees that don't live in hives, will be a fantastic way to invite the bee population to your yard. If your surrounding area has killed off ALL insect populations for miles around you - (I suppose it's possible?) (DO the "bad bugs" EVER really leave??) a last ditch attempt at creating a wildlife habitat would be to order some from the internet. Although, be super careful when doing this to only bring the bugs which are, or were, native to your area. You wouldn't want to try to grow a population of insects that didn't have natural enemies, or conditions, to keep nature in balance. I think if you really want it, it's definitely worth it a shot to bring back some of what's been destroyed! Even a half acre is enough room to do so. Good Luck! 👍

@@gardengatesopen For fireflies it's just too hot and dry here in the summer and possibly too cold in the winter (close to 0*F for weeks at a time.). As for wood chips, there is only one company in the entire city that has a wood chipper. And they have a waiting list for their wood chips. They contract with the power companies so I cannot get chips through the power company's or the city's maintenance dept. Even the city does not own a wood chipper - they prefer to just take branches to the city dump. Although I call regularly, my name only works its way to the top of the list about once a year - so on average I get one truck load of wood chips once a year. (The county and forestry departments sell their wood chips to the power generating companies). Do fireflies eat wood chips? That would make things easy. There never has been any fireflies in this part of the state. It's probably only back east or down south fireflies can survive. Are there companies that sell firefly eggs or larva? I imagine I would need to set up some type of automatic daily watering system. I would need to set up some type of fencing to keep birds out of the firefly area. And the area needs to big enough so people don't feel like they are in a cage when they enter. Not really any "bad bugs" here other than aphids. So not too worried about that. I did create a flower garden (over 30 ft long and 6 ft wide) just to see if I could attract any pollinators. I wanted to see some type of life - bees, butterflies, etc. Some of the flowers were dripping with pollen, but no bug life until towards the end of summer. Walk down Main Street - lined with beautiful flowering trees but not one bee. I once tried to set up a little temperate rain forest - I used 80% shade cloth, a pallet of mulch, compost etc worked into the soil, and over 40 different types of hardy ferns and automatically watered daily. Three years later only two fern types remain - the "aggressive" Ostrich fern (but its not aggressive in my fern garden) and Maidenhair ferns. But the biggest obstacle I have to fireflies (and bees and butterflies) is my city has a mosquito abatement program. They drive up and down the streets late at night, and spray some type of poison into people's front yards. It kills the bees, butterflies, and most of the mosquitos. But not the wasps. Most likely it would kill the fireflies too. I think I'm just out of luck with any firefly project.

@sphillips6357 Ahhhh, now I see... I thought perhaps you were in a spot that used to have fireflies, but now doesn't. So yes, the temperatures are going to be an issue. I'm not sure on the exact parameters of their cold tolerances. However, I think the extreme cold is one reason fireflies aren't found up North as much. Even though there are over 2000 different types of fireflies, and we know there ARE some who can take the Winter cold because places like Michigan have fireflies. I'm sure the places that have them along with cold temps it's because their mulch piles are nicely protected with a blanket of snow, or something similar to that. I'm a Southerner, so I'm not educated on which fireflies have a cold tolerance. So you're right, even if you could get past the mosquito poisons, the temperatures are probably going to rule you out. If fireflies did survive the natural conditions, I thought perhaps you would be able to have a population WITHIN the limits of your property, hopefully avoiding those nasty mosquito chemicals altogether. It's a real shame that citizens are exposed to those poisons without any say in receiving them, or not. What a bummer!! (For SO many reasons!) As for the woodchips... First - firefly larvae don't eat the wood. They are carnivores. They clean up the gardens WITH lots of leaf litter & woodchips by eating a lot of the soft body pests who also like hanging out in woodchips & leaf litter. Nature's pest control! They specialize in snail and slug control which are their favorite things to eat. The firefly larvae have the longest lifespan of all the firefly life cycles. The larvae live in mulch, usually for about 2 years! The next cycle is adulthood, which is the phase we all see, the flying beetle, the firefly. The finding & getting of woodchips sounds dire in your area!! How very frustrating!!! Think of the nice little niche business you could have if you only had a log splitter and decent woodchipper of your own!! I bet you could easily have the city drop the logs at your place instead of the city dump! They might even save money by not having to drop them at the dump?!! 2nd - I wish you well in your pollinator endeavor!! I know you can get quite a lot of bugs in the mail, but alas, not fireflies. At least, not at this time. I'm no expert, but I have heard they are much too delicate to be shipped. Make some bug hotels & see who moves in!! But if you do end up finding some, you would definitely need to be sure they were the right variety for your area.

Thank you for commenting, yes, we need fireflies and all other native invertebrates as well!

According to Dr. Doug Tallamy, a number of insects emerge late in the season and leaves should not be removed. You can try to move them to a less noticeable part of your property.

Thanks, so nice of you! Thanks for planting natives!

The larvae eat snails, slugs and worms. Adult fireflies (if they eat at all) eat pollen, nectar and other bugs. If you're trying to create a garden motif that is pro-pollinators and fireflies, but also meets mant HOA or local code enforcement standards, something like a Cottage Garden or Rustic Garden style works great with their needs. Throw in a shallow water pool, pond or slow flow water system with native tall grasses to add more dragonflies to that list and the tall native grass also helps the fireflies. 😊

Hi Claudia, regarding fireflies there aren't specific plants, it's more about creating the right the habitat where the soil is not disturbed and there are places to hide.

Thanks for commenting, don't be sad, the object is to take steps that create better habitats for them so their populations can increase.

This comment is not accurate, the video does discuss the use of pesticides.

@@NativePlantChannel can you do a show on the science behind both? As their "proven" damage to biological health as well as geoscience. Our town has stopped spraying for mosquitoes the last 4 years and we have more lightening bugs, bees, and butterflies than we have since they started spraying. We seen a uptick in them when the local farmer's didn't grow and no pesticides we're sprayed that year as well. But, yeah, it's the climate. In a way they are right, but it's the climate of their own choice as to what to blame for the fall of the planet as well as the cancer rates.

​@@divineknowledge4607 It's honestly both plus more. The combination of destabilizing climate (switching from holocene to anthropocene) AND the extensive use of pesticides AND our western cultures' obsession with "neat", "tidy", minecraft worthy squares of short grass lawns, all contribute to the decline of not just fireflies but all of the insects and subsequent wildlife we need to survive.

@@kcthonian my point is they push a single narrative which makes people ignore what they are saying all together.