Ladybugs and praying mantes

(Had to look up the plural of mantis - could be mantises or mantes according to Merriam-Webster We try to use as few chemicals in and around our home as possible. In the garden I try not to use any chemicals that are not specifically for organic gardens. I've had a bad problem with snails in the past and have used Sluggo for organic gardens purchased at Armstrong nursery. It's an iron phosphate pellet that you sprinkle on the soil around the area where the snails are. It works great! Picking off the snails from my plants and chucking them into the ravine had been my previous method but they seemed to reproduce faster than I could find them. For aphids I spray a hard stream of water on my plants. If that doesn't do the trick, I purchase lady bugs or praying mantis and release them in the garden. There's a great article here on natural aphid control and it explains the part that ants play in the whole system. http://www.attainable-sustainable.net/aphid-control/