Cultural options include weeding, hand-picking the pest, manipulating the host plant, and more. Cultural practices include selecting the right plant for the right location to minimize potential pest problems. It also includes watering properly and keeping the plant healthy.
Plant resistance or tolerance to a pest is also part of cultural practices. We live in an area where rose black spot disease is common because of our environment (humidity). Therefore, select a rose that is black spot resistant.
When Japanese beetles show up, before I pick up the spray bottle, I hand-pick as many as I can and determine the population size. If populations are small, handpicking works; if populations are big, I resort to pesticides.
Biological control is letting Mother Nature take over. This takes a little bit of practice and knowledge. You need to be able to identify the good guys that do the job biologically. I had aphids on my tomato plants one year, and I looked around and found lacewing eggs on the plant and the tomato stakes. A week later, the aphids were gone.
Learn to identify good guys, such as syrphid flies and ladybeetles; their larvae eat soft-bodied insects such as aphids. Plant flowers that attract good guys as well.
The final choice is chemical and should be used when you or the plant has reached the tolerance level. In other words, if you don’t act, there won’t be a plant left.
Remember, when using a chemical to control a pest, read the label and apply according to the directions. As mentioned in last week’s column, if you select the target pesticide for the appropriate pest, you can minimize the effect on the environment and beneficial pests.
Pesticides have changed dramatically over time. They no longer stick around in the environment for long periods, such as chlordane, rotenone, and some of the other products sold years ago. Garden centers still had rotenone in the early 80s.
There is one key factor crucial to success with IPM, and that is scouting. Taking time to walk the fields or your landscape is necessary to catch a pest problem before it builds. Implementing action early also helps to minimize pesticide usage.
Our nurseries, growing many different crops, have scouts who walk fields regularly. This allows them to identify a problem early and perhaps select a “softer” pesticide. Caterpillars, if caught early, can be controlled with Bt or Bacillus thuringiensis, one of the safest pesticides available.
Bagworms are a problem in the landscape, particularly on evergreens. If found early, hand-picking the “bags” and destroying them is a great way to decrease populations. Right now, people in the Toledo area are scouting for egg masses of spotted lanternfly and scraping them and destroying.
As I said, IPM is not easy, but once you learn about the specific plant and its pest problem, solutions become easier, and it’s better for the environment.
Pamela Corle-Bennett is the state master gardener volunteer coordinator and horticulture educator for Ohio State University Extension. Contact her by email at bennett.27@osu.edu.
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