I am struggling to find a balanced approach to pests in my garden. I don’t want to kill them all, but I also don’t want them to destroy my garden. Any suggestions? SC

Integrated Pest Management or IPM is an environmentally sensitive approach to managing garden pests through a multi-practice strategy. Through the use of IPM, we work to eliminate the pest problem through good management rather than just reaching for the nearest chemical solution. Yes, there are products that can quickly take care of most insect problems, but there are always downsides. IPM is a strategy that helps us minimize the downsides as best we can, while encouraging and supporting our insect neighbors.

First of all, since the term “pest” is front and center in Integrated Pest Management, let’s define what we are talking about when we use the word “pest.” A pest is a living organism that can be harmful to humans, our food, or our living quarters. If these living organisms are not getting up in our business, so to speak, we are not experiencing them as pests, they are just fellow inhabitants of our planet, living their lives. It’s when they start eating our broccoli or tomatoes etc. that they enter into pest status.

Integrated Pest Management consists of 4 practices: Cultural Controls, Biological Controls, Mechanical and Physical Controls, and responsible Chemical Control as the last and hopefully least utilized practice.

In this article and the next, we’ll discuss each of these in greater detail. So, here goes.

Cultural Controls

The best way to minimize pest problems in your garden is by properly managing the plants and conditions in your garden. If you have had problems with a particular disease or diseases in your garden, start by seeking out disease resistant plants. Seed packets have a lot of information on them and there are oftentimes options that have a certain amount of disease resistance bred in. This is not accomplished via genetic modifications (GMO) but through careful crossbreeding to create a stronger, more resistant variety. For example, you can find tomato seeds that are resistant to fusarium wilt, tomato mosaic virus, early blight, and others. So, if you have had problems with these diseases in your garden, start with plants that are resistant to these diseases.

Next, do your best to create an environment that encourages healthy plants because healthy plants do better than not so healthy plants. To start with, most vegetable plants and flowering plants need 8 - 10 hours of sun per day. If your plants are located in places where they don’t get the proper amount of sun, they will be weaker and more susceptible to disease.

Another aspect of cultural control is maintaining a healthy growing environment. This means you can’t be “hands-off” with your garden. Personally, I like to hand-water my plants. This is a great way to keep an eye on them since I am out there several times a week. When you are out in your garden and you start to notice a disease issue, clip off those diseased leaves, and throw them away. This helps reduce the issue rather than letting it remain and spread. After doing this, be sure to clean your pruner with a 10% bleach solution so that your pruner doesn’t become what is spreading the disease. Also keep an eye out for problem insects. If they are caught early, physically removing the insects is a great option.

Crop rotation is another way to help minimize plant disease issues. I know we all have our favorite vegetable garden layouts, but when we plant the same plants in the same location each year, we are unwittingly encouraging a perhaps, small pathogen population to grow by giving them what they need to prosper. Crop rotation discourages this build up and thereby helps minimize problems before they start.

But, to rotate effectively, you will need to learn about vegetable crop families. For example, if you grow tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes, you might think you are rotating your crops properly by rotating their locations in your garden. But tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes are all in the same crop family and therefore subject to many of the same diseases. We have information on crop families on our website www.tulsamastergardeners.org. Just go to the Lawn and Garden Help section and click on Vegetables.

One last item in the cultural control category is mulch. Yes, here we are talking about mulch again. But a good layer of mulch will provide a barrier between some of the soil-borne diseases and our plants. If the pathogen can’t splash up from the soil onto the leaves of your plants, you have gone a long way to minimize disease in your garden.

Biological Control

Biological control is an interesting one because in involves using good bugs to fight bad bugs so to speak. As an example, let’s talk about aphids. Aphids can send shivers up the spine of gardeners because they multiply like crazy and can literally suck the life out of your plants. An IPM practice to minimize damage from aphids can involve Lady Beetles (aka ladybugs). While lady beetles look cute and sweet, they can devour up to 50 aphids per day. You can purchase a container of lady beetles at many garden centers, take them home, release them near the aphids, and let nature do the work. The downside is that once the food supply of aphids has been eliminated, the lady beetles will depart to look for food. But this is still a very Earth friendly way to approach aphid control.

Another aspect to biological control will likely require a shift in some of our thinking away from “all insects are bad and need to be eliminated” to “all insects have a purpose.” For example: wasps. Many wasps feed on the insects we don’t want in our garden, so at the first sign of a wasp nest, remember, these insects could be helping you control the insects you don’t want in your garden. Encouraging birds by adding a bird feeder is another great idea since birds love to dine on caterpillars.

There’s more to IPM than can be covered here today. So, check back in next week and we’ll cover two more strategies in your Integrated Pest Management toolbox. See you in the garden!

You can get answers to all your gardening questions by calling the Tulsa Master Gardeners Help Line at 918-746-3701, dropping by our Diagnostic Center at 4116 E. 15th Street, or by emailing us at mg@tulsamastergardeners.org.

Photo: Jim Occi, BugPics, Bugwood.org