What is Integrated Pest Management? How does it work?
Integrated pest management sounds complex, but is simply a holistic approach to creating a healthy, fruitful garden without harming the environment. By following the five steps of IPM, you will begin to understand your yard’s ecological systems and take the least harmful approach to controlling pests.
Pests refer to insects, weeds, animals, and diseases.
Step One: Prevention
Prevention is the best cure. If you can prevent the bugs, animals, or disease in the first place, you won’t have to resort to harsher methods.
Healthy plants are the best defense. Plants that are stressed by drought, too much water, not enough fertilizer, or the wrong growing conditions, will be more susceptible to pests. Refer to A Plant’s Basic Needs for an overview of how to grow a healthy plant.
This also fits with the first of the four types of controls, cultural, explained in detail on the next page. By cultivating a healthy environment you prevent many problems from ever starting.
Step Two: Inspection
Examine your plants. This can be done when you are watering, weeding, or wandering around with a cup of coffee or glass of wine and admiring the new blooms or tidy beds.
Any signs of plant distress: changes to the leaves and growing habits, or signs of insect damage such as missing parts of the leaf, should be noted and dealt with as soon as possible. Sometimes the solution is as simple as grabbing the watering can or hose and giving them a drink.
When you see damage, take a closer look. Flip your leaves over, check the soil around the plant, and look at surrounding plants.
Do you see any insects or eggs on the underside of the leaves? Are the leaves curling, changing colour, marked with spots or holes, has the plant wilted or stopped growing? Are other plants affected? Take pictures so that you have a reference for researching the culprit and best treatment option.
Step Three: Identification
If a pest or disease symptom appears, you must identify it. Treating the wrong insect or using the wrong control won’t solve your problem and could potentially make it worse. Applying a product that kills off beneficial insects or harms the plant is counterproductive.
Use your photos to track down possible answers. There is a free feature with Google photos called Google Lens and it will look up any picture and compare it to others on the Internet, sometimes returning your answer in moments.
Some insects only affect specific plants so make sure to include the plant’s name when you are searching the symptoms.
Step Four: Tolerance
Another component of IPM is determining your level of tolerance. How many bugs or how much disease is allowable? Not all bad bugs are terrible. They are part of the food chain and can be considered beneficial, in that sense.
Not all disease will affect or kill the plant; perhaps it is only cosmetically unappealing. Our intention for planting flowers and trees is to beautify the landscape, but perhaps some ‘ugly’ can be overlooked if the cure is worse than the disease.
Determine what your level of tolerance is for pests and disease. If an outbreak occurs and your plants are suffering, then you must decide on how to control the pest.
