Organic farmer Brad Bailie is a believer in bugs.

Strips of blooming plants in a maze of colors — from blue bachelor buttons to white yarrow — dot his 600-acre farm north of Connell. They border fields of potatoes, onions, shallots, primitive heritage wheat varieties spelt and einkorn, and camelina.

In each strip, insects, from wasps to flies and lady bugs, search for plant-damaging insects or larvae to eat.

Next to one strip is a long patch with green timothy and orchard grass and fescue jutting out from tufts of dead grass — a “beetle bank” that provides year-round protection for ground beetles that dine on other insects and weed seeds.

Bailie is among a handful of row crop and vegetable farmers in Washington and a small number in Oregon who have created habitat for beetle banks, which originated in England and have been widely used in New Zealand.

While the practice is not widespread in this country, researchers say beetle banks show promise as another tool in the growing sustainable farming movement to control crop-damaging bug pests and weeds through integrated pest management.

Integrated pest management can include ecological and biological controls, such as the use of so-called beneficial insects like ground beetles, wasps, lacewings, parasitoid tachinid flies and damsel bugs.

Tree fruit farmers have tapped biological controls for years: Researchers in the 1960s discovered a predatory mite that was effective in controlling mites, said Vince Jones, professor and entomologist at Washington State University’s Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center in Wenatchee.

There is expanding interest today among row crop and vegetable farmers, particularly organic growers, in using natural methods and minimizing use of costly pesticides, say plant scientists and entomologists in the Northwest.

Nationwide, the amount of certified organic cropland acreage grew from 850,173 acres in 1997 to 1.72 million by 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.