I had so many of both in my garden. The assassin bugs were on every plant. It's like they set military outposts to guard everything. What was really cool, is when the plants started fruiting, I would find them on the oldest, largest fruits of the plants. I couldn't believe how synergistic my approach ended up last season. I have done this before with ladybugs, and they're there year round, but last year was the first with a permanent and constant mass of assassin bugs.

The seasons bring things like frogs, lizards, spiders (or maybe they just come and go as they please), but those 2 have been my main line of defense. I can sit in the garden for 10 minutes and witness at least 1 act of bug on bug violence from these 2 groups. It's great.

Actually, the coolest thing I ever witnessed played out over about 20-30 minutes. A wasp of some sort fought a large spider. First the wasp chased the spider down until it slowed it down a bit by tiring it out. They fought and wrestled for a good 10 minutes. The wasp finally won and then hooked 2 legs into the spider and started dragging it across the yard. I couldn't believe it. It just dragged and dragged it. Finally about several yards later it was dragging it by this tiny hole. Out of the hole came a bull frog looking creature and ate the wasp. It sat there like a fat pig for about 10 minutes and then ate the spider. It crawled back in its hole shortly after, presumably to make some babies.

I tried to catch this on camera, I got some of it, but the video didn't come out at all. It was like a live action discovery channel moment...