You can find spiders anywhere you find insects: under mulch, in weeds in old fields, on plants, on trees, in and around out buildings, under boards and in your house. There are many spiders living in wooded areas.
How To Attract And Keep Spiders
In The Lawn - You keep a large force of spiders working in your lawn when you mow the grass no lower than two inches; two and a half is even better. At the same time you need to have thick or dense grass which occurs only if you overseed every three or four years. Finally, use no broad spectrum insecticides on your lawn.
In The Vegetable Garden - Practice no-till gardening as much as you can. Use a hay or straw mulch between your garden rows or plant flowering buckwheat. Do not leave bare soil in your rows in the vegetable or flower garden.
The real advantage of spiders as a pest control is their ability to get up to speed in the first year of a garden where other beneficials may take a year to increase to the numbers needed to control the bad guys.
One of the most detrimental activities is to cultivate in late fall. The exception is to have an area in your yard left undisturbed and let some plant debris in this area. This will provide an area so the young spiders can start out in the spring devouring bad guys.
You will not attract and keep spiders if you use insecticides to frequently, especially broad spec-trum insecticides. These good guys are very sensitive to nearly all insecticides used around the yard.
