Identification: The First Step in Eco-Friendly Pest Management
Along your gardening journey, you will see plant damage due to pests. But before you reach for a toxic spray, consider preventing and reducing pest issues with eco-friendly methods. To find the most effective strategies to handle common seasonal and expected pests with ease, proper identification is key. This first step of integrated pest management helps you build a balanced ecosystem for your garden while keeping harmful toxins out of the environment.
What is a Pest?
Pests aren’t just bugs. They are organisms that:
Interfere with desirable plants in our gardens, orchards, landscapes, or wildlands
Damage homes or other structures
Impact human and animal health
Harm water quality or parts of the ecoystem
Transmit disease
Are a nuisance or unwanted
A pest can be a plant (weed), vertebrate (bird, rodent, or other mammal), invertebrate (insect, tick, mite, or snail), nematode, or pathogen (bacteria, virus, or fungus).
Learn to Identify: Pest or Pal?
When you come across a bug on your plant, a natural reaction is to reach for a pesticide. The trouble is… do you even know what kind of bug it is? Is it truly a pest or is it actually a beneficial insect?
This is why I recommend you take the integrated pest management (IPM) approach. It’s a decision-making process using science-based strategies that looks at the garden as an entire ecosystem. IPM encourages you to ask questions that dig into the root of the problem before you react or reach for a pesticide.
Questions like: What is the problem at hand? Are the pests the problem or a symptom of the problem? What is my threshold of tolerance?
Before you take action against an intruder in your garden, IPM also encourages you to learn the difference between beneficial bugs and true pests. Not all bugs are bad! And bugs in your garden aren’t automatically a bad thing!
Seeing them in your garden is actually a good thing – you want to see life! In fact, the good bugs play an important role in the health of your garden. You want these beneficials around:
Ladybugs and ladybug larvae
Lacewings and lacewing larvae
Syrphid flies, hoverflies, or flower flies
Mealybug destroyers and larvae
Dragonflies
Spiders
On the other hand, some pests can harm your plants and disrupt the balance in your garden’s ecosystem. When you see them, you want to make the proper identification so you can take the appropriate action against them:
Aphids
Snails and slugs
Citrus and vegetable leafminer
Thrips
Spider mites
White cabbage loopers
Flea beetles – feed on the foliage of seedlings and leafy greens
Cucumber beetles
Hoplia beetles and rose curculios
Mosquitoes
Fungus gnats
Spotted lanternflies
Why Proper Identification Matters
In IPM, it’s important to:
Identify the pest by visiting a trusted organization’s website or by asking an expert
Understand its lifecycle so you know if/when to take action
Know the pests’ habitat and timing (when it shows up and where)
Identify whether natural enemies are present or not
Evaluate your threshold of tolerance
Do you know the host and the plant? In California, you can use the UC IPM website to identify the pests that affect that plant, or visit your local Cooperative Extension office or garden center to ask associates about the pests affecting your plants.
Proper identification of a pest matters because many are host-specific, can indicate your plant is stressed, or tell you that your garden lacks beneficial predators for that specific plant. And an infestation? That’s a clue that something isn’t working.
All of this knowledge helps you make an informed plan of action to address the root cause of the problem.
Because while some pests harm your garden’s delicate ecosystem, others are seasonal and expected. They provide food for beneficials, birds, and other garden allies, which help keep a good balance. Your threshold of tolerance as a gardener can determine how healthy your garden’s ecology truly is.
It’s normal to miss a pest problem in your garden until it’s extreme. In this case, prevention isn’t helpful. Sometimes you do have to use a chemical control like a pesticide. But if you can identify the problem quickly and correctly, there are plenty of ways to manage the pests with eco-friendly methods first.
Pest Look-alikes
For beginner gardeners, the biggest problem you might run into is pest look-alikes. Let’s dig into an example, so you’re prepared.
Imagine you see this on the leaves of your fruit trees in the spring. What do you do? The first step is to identify the pest. Once you do, you’ll realize there are two different pests here! The next step is to determine the correct course of action for the specific pest.
For this plant, you would use an insecticide to manage the aphids.
For this plant, you would use a fungicide to manage the peach leaf curl.
Ways to Grow Together
Identification is the first step in eco-friendly pest management. It’s not always easy, but it’s important for the health of your garden and the environment beyond. Practice makes perfect, especially for beginner gardeners, but you can always lean on the experts for help.
If you want to learn more about eco-friendly pest management and how to properly identify a pest vs a pal, book me for your next garden club, business group, organization, or lunch and learn event!