
Practice Integrated Pest Management
Pests are organisms that damage or interfere with desirable plants in our gardens and orchards. They may disfigure plants, transmit diseases, and damage crops. A pest can be a vertebrate (bird, rodent, or other mammal), an invertebrate (insect, tick, mite, slug or snail), a nematode, or a pathogen (bacteria, virus, or fungus), or a weed that competes with the desirable plants.
Integrated Pest Management, or IPM, is an ecosystem-based strategy that focuses on long term prevention of pests or their damage through a combination of techniques such as biological control, habitat manipulation, modification of cultural practices, and use of resistant varieties.
Pest control tools are selected and applied in a manner that minimizes risks to human health, beneficial and non-target organisms, and the environment.
Why Choose IPM?
- Provides long term-solutions to pest problems
- Provides a management system that keeps potential problems from getting out of hand
- Gives choices for management that don’t require pesticides
- Eliminates unnecessary pesticide use
- Supports a healthy garden environment and ecosystem
Practice IPM
- Modify habitats to deter pests
- Maintain plants with proper care as healthy plants can better tolerate pests
- Select plant varieties that are resistant to disease pathogens
- Mow and cultivate weeds before they go to seed
- Protect and create habitat for natural enemies of pests
- Use pesticides as a last resort, and when necessary, select the least toxic products
Additional Information
- https://sonomamg.ucanr.edu/Integrated_Pest_Management/
- https://www2.ipm.ucanr.edu/what-is-IPM/?src=redirect2refresh
- http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/menu.homegarden.html
- http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/weeds_intro.html
- https://sonomamg.ucanr.edu/Integrated_Pest_Management/Weeds/
- http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/menu.weeds.html
- http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn74126.html