Pests can damage your business by chewing through electrical wires, contaminating inventory or spreading disease. Properly managing pests reduces the risk to your business and customers.
Prevention is the primary goal in most pest management situations. Using physical controls (traps, screens, barriers) and changing the environment to limit pests’ access often are enough to control pest populations. Contact Armis Pest Management for professional help.
Accurate pest identification is an important first step in any pest management program. The more you know about a pest, the better you can predict its presence and impact on your crop.
To identify the pest, look for the damage it causes and compare to known damage patterns. For example, weevils leave distinctive chew holes in the edges of leaves and caterpillars leave sloppy webs or stringy trails. Also note the pest’s size, color and other physical features. Then, search online or in printed reference guides for the pest’s characteristics and habits.
Once you have identified the pest, consider its life cycle and habits to determine whether prevention or suppression is a better goal. For instance, if a particular insect is only present during certain times of the year, you may be able to prevent it from damaging your crops by managing its environmental conditions.
Other natural factors, such as weather, disease, competition, natural enemies and availability of food and shelter can affect pest populations. Some of these factors are unavoidable, but others, such as proper sanitation, controlling moisture in and around buildings, sealing cracks, storing firewood properly and using dehumidifiers may help reduce or eliminate indoor pest problems.
Depending on the type of pest, you may want to use biological controls before resorting to chemicals. For example, bacteria such as Bacillus thuringiensis produce toxin that destroys the midgut of caterpillars, eliminating them without harming people or other animals. These organisms can be introduced to the environment in a “microbial mat” or other delivery system, such as a spore matrix, and used to control pests.
Continuous pests are usually recurring and require regular control. Sporadic and potential pests are less predictable, but you can take steps to create conditions that make it more likely they will occur. For example, by ensuring your plants are healthy and well-watered, you can reduce the likelihood of disease, which is often the cause of sporadic or potential pests. You can also protect plants by selecting varieties that are resistant to disease, and you can use barriers, such as screens or caulk, to keep pests out of your garden or home.
Developing a Management Strategy
Pest management practices are designed to minimize harm to beneficial organisms and the environment. They are based on ecosystem principles and take into account the role of pests in a natural environment. They include prevention – keeping a pest from becoming a problem, suppression – reducing a pest population to an acceptable level, and eradication – destroying the pests. They may involve mechanical, cultural, biological, or chemical control methods.
In the landscape, preventing pest damage is usually more important than treating it once it has occurred. A good preventive program requires a thorough understanding of the pests’ life cycles, preferred food sources, and habitat needs. It also involves regular monitoring and scouting to detect problems at an early stage and provide timely feedback to treatment decisions.
A good pest-reduction program often includes planting species that the pests don’t like or use as food. These include weeds that compete with the pest for resources, as well as plants that attract natural predators or parasitoids to keep the population at acceptable levels. For example, planting flowering plants such as asters (Aster spp.) and serviceberries (Amelanchier canadensis) provides nectar for insect predators to reduce caterpillar populations, while the bacterium Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) kills caterpillars by attacking their midguts.
When it is necessary to treat for pests, the goal is to reduce the number of pests to an acceptable level while minimizing the amount of harmful injury to the turf or surrounding plants. This is usually easier to accomplish than eradicating the pests. However, eradication is sometimes attempted for invasive alien pests, such as the Mediterranean fruit fly and the gypsy moth.
Scouting and monitoring should be done regularly, on a schedule that varies depending on the type of pest and the environment. It is important to know which life stage the pests are in (egg, larva/nymph, pupa, or adult) so that treatments can be tailored to that phase of their development. It is also helpful to know what environmental conditions affect the growth of the pests – for example, whether it is hot and dry or cool and wet.
Implementing the Strategy
Defining objectives, accurately identifying pests, understanding their biology and behavior, developing clear strategies, and selecting appropriate management practices are essential to managing pest problems. Management practices are a combination of methods and tools that include preventive measures, sanitation, mechanical controls, biological control, physical controls, chemical controls, and cultural practices. Effective pest management starts as soon as a problem is identified and includes routine monitoring and record keeping.
Pests attack plants from all directions – rodents and nematodes spoil roots, ants and snails eat leaves and fruit, birds destroy seeds or fruits, caterpillars munch on flowers, and fungi and viruses infect or kill plant cells. In addition, pests displace native species, affect terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, degrade the appearance of lawns or gardens, and can damage buildings or other structures.
A well-implemented integrated pest management (IPM) program combines preventive strategies and non-chemical methods with pesticides when necessary. The goal is to use the least amount of pesticide to achieve the desired result. This can be done by adjusting the timing of treatments, increasing the effectiveness of organic or non-chemical methods, and by using fewer chemicals overall.
Some pests can be controlled without pesticides at all, through habitat manipulation, cultural and environmental changes, or the selection of resistant plants. When pesticides are used, proper application is important to minimize their risk of adverse impacts on human health and the environment. Regulatory considerations also must be taken into account.
The goal is to achieve the best balance between desirable plants, natural enemies of pests, and beneficial organisms. In this way, a healthy ecosystem can stabilize pest populations at a tolerable level without the need for heavy intervention.
Many pests only thrive as long as their food, water, or shelter are available. Landscape features such as mountains, lakes, and rivers restrict the movement of some pests. In addition, preventing pests from entering the property or building and stopping them from spreading to other parts of the property can greatly reduce their population size. These preventive strategies are called “barrier management.” They may include installing barriers, such as screens or traps, sealing the area where pests enter and exit a building (weatherization), cleaning up trash, maintaining clean work areas and storage facilities, and fixing leaky pipes to limit water availability.
Monitoring After Treatments
When pest control methods are used, it is important to monitor the results and evaluate the success of the management strategy. This can help determine whether the threshold level has been reached and to select the most effective controls. In addition, monitoring can help in the development of new pest management strategies and to better understand how environmental factors affect pest behavior and populations.
Scouting or checking for pests on a regular basis helps you identify what kinds of pests are in an area, how many, and what damage they’ve caused. This is a critical first step in pest management and can also provide valuable information about the biology of the pest, including its growth cycle, food sources, and habitat requirements. It can also give you a sense of the timing and frequency of pest control actions that are necessary.
In some situations, such as in health care facilities, the tolerance level for certain pests is zero, and control must occur as soon as the pests are detected. In other cases, such as in agricultural fields, the tolerance level may be based on esthetic or economic injury thresholds.
Cultural methods can be used to reduce the number of pests without chemical intervention. These include properly preparing the soil, choosing plants that are adapted to site conditions and that are not attractive to pests; rotating crops; interplanting; managing weeds; and planting “trap” crops (e.g., soybeans attract Japanese beetles; radishes or turnips lure Lygus plant bugs). Physical barriers can also help manage pests. These can include screens, traps, fences, and other structures that keep pests out of a field or garden. Planting resistant landscape or vegetable varieties is another option. Pheromones can also be used to manipulate insect populations. These chemicals, which mimic the odors released by male insects to attract females, can confuse the males and prevent mating, which reduces the pest population.
When pesticides are used, it is critical to use them responsibly and limit environmental contamination. This requires careful reading of pesticide labels and NMSU guidance documents, understanding application requirements and restrictions, and purchasing and using the right personal protective equipment (PPE). Also, pesticide cleanup and disposal procedures must be followed to minimize contamination.