Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteers of Buncombe County

integrated pest management

A strategy for keeping plant damage within bounds by carefully monitoring crops, predicting trouble before it happens and then selecting the appropriate controls — biological, cultural, or chemical as necessary.

Gardening Video: Managing Bad Bugs in Your Vegetable Garden

Saturday Seminar presents:
Managing Bad Bugs in Your Vegetable Garden—Lessons from The Learning Garden

Squash Vine Borer adult_Lisa Brown_CC BY-NC 2.0_Flickr
Squash vine borer adult

Presenter: Laura Brooks, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer

Now that you’ve planted your vegetable garden, it’s time to discuss the nemesis of every veggie gardener: bad bugs!  Which ones should you look out for and what can you do about them?

Laura Brooks, co-chair of The Learning Garden’s vegetable plot located at the Buncombe County Extension office, highlights the three most common pests that were encountered last year in The Learning Garden: squash vine borers, flea beetles, and Mexican bean beetles. She describes the organic methods that Master Gardeners used to help ward off these pesky insects.  Laura explains the life cycle of these insects, what they look like from larvae to adult stages, when they emerge, and effective treatments.

To access this video on the Buncombe County Master Gardener website, click on the link:

Managing Bad Bugs in Your Vegetable Garden

Or go to www.buncombemastergardener.org, click on the ‘Resources’ tab at the top of the page and select ‘Gardening Videos’ from the drop down menu.

Beneficial Insects: Attract the Good, the Voracious, and the Ugly to Your Garden

Early on, I learned that nature has many solutions to insect problems. My father, an entomologist, and grandfather, a horticulturalist, used chemicals only when all else failed—a philosophy that flew in the face of America’s love affair with pesticides in the 1960s. Today we call this approach to gardening Integrated Pest Management (IPM). 

Integrated Pest Management
According to Craig Mauney, Extension Specialist, IPM involves looking for long term solutions, not short-term fixes. “This requires us to be highly engaged gardeners,” Mauney says. “By that I mean we prevent problems by properly planting the right plants. We look for evidence of insect damage as plants grow and observe patterns of plant decline. When there are problems, we use mechanical, cultural, and biological tools first. Chemicals are a last resort.” 

Biological Management
North Carolina State University’s (NCSU) Extension Gardener Handbook defines biological management as “the process of reducing a pest population by using predators, parasitoids (often called parasites), or disease organisms that ordinarily occur in nature.” Why? Because in the great web of life, plant-feeding insects are food for other insects.

Matching Predator and Pest
Sounds good, but how does the home gardener know which beneficial insects to encourage? Good places to start are the Buncombe County Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteers Helpline (828-255-5522) and NCSU’s Cooperative Extension website. Common beneficial predators in western North Carolina gardens include: ground beetles, ladybird beetles, lacewings, wheel bugs, hoverflies, and predatory mites. These active insects have long life-cycles and prey on smaller, weaker insects, usually devouring them in one gulp. 

Ladybug_Hippodamia-tredecimpunctata_Gilles-San-Martin_CC-BY-SA-2.0_Flickr
Ladybird or ladybug beetle devours aphids

Ladybird or Ladybug Beetle
According to the University of Florida’s Entomology Department, the name of these familiar red and black insects “has been used in England for more than 600 years…The lady for whom they were named was the Virgin Mary, and common names in other European languages have the same association (the German name Marienkafer translates to Marybeetle or ladybeetle).” How can the ladybird better help your garden? Some of the pests they help control include aphids, scales, whiteflies, and mites. 

Lacewing_Nell Kelley_CC BY-NC 2.0_Flickr
Green lacewing

Lacewings
Lacewings are distinguished by roof-like, transparent wings that are held over the insect’s body. Known as “aphid lions,” the larvae of the lacewing emerge hungry and voraciously feed on aphids and other soft-bodied insects, such as mealybugs, scales, thrips, whiteflies, spider mites, leafhopper nymphs, and caterpillar eggs. According to Michigan State University, “natural control of aphids is possible when there is one (lacewing) larva per 70 aphids.” Not bad for an insect that grows to just a half-inch long! These beneficial insects are particularly sensitive to pesticides, however!

Wheel Bugs or Assassin Bugs
We know them as those sinister-looking, long-snouted, brown insects that appear in great numbers each spring, often in places where we don’t want them, like our homes and cars. One place we do want them is in the garden. These predators prefer dining on soft-bodied insects such as caterpillars, moths, aphids, and small beetles. Wheel bugs are not aggressive, but they can give you a painful bite if handled improperly. If you have to pick one up, use a paper towel to gently remove it to the great outdoors where it can protect your garden.

Syrphid fly_Debbie Ross_NCState_AgExtAgent
Syrphid fly or hover fly

Hoverflies or Syrphid flies
They look like wasps but they’re really flies. The name—hover fly—comes from the way they hang in the air during flight. In their adult form, they are pollinators. In their larval form, they are predators. The larvae are often found among aphid colonies, one of their favorite foods. These doubly beneficial insects are sensitive to several broad-spectrum pesticides, especially organophosphates (OP) such as parathion and malathion.

Promoting Beneficial Insects
Want to attract beneficial insects? An important key is to plant so that there are blooms year-round in the garden. Opt for native plants that flower and include both flowering annuals and perennials to feed beneficial insects.

Article written by Janet Moore, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer.

Plant Bullies, Part II

So you’ve identified a garden bully, invasive plants. A quick review of your options for dealing with them starts with breaking the reproductive cycle so they do not spread. Don’t let them go to seed, particularly if they’re annuals. Or use a pre-emergent treatment so the seeds don’t germinate.

You can exhaust them by continued weeding, mowing, flaming or maybe grazing goats.Goats

And in the last resort category we have something that those folks back in ’96 lacked – herbicides, chemicals developed to take advantage of the plant’s weakness. Our garden centers have shelf after shelf of bagged and bottled herbicides, and it can be overwhelming when there are several brands with similar claims in big letters on the label. It’s the fine print and the instructions that you need to read, before you buy and then again before you mix and apply. For example, don’t buy a weed-preventer to kill existing weeds. And don’t expect an herbicide to make a distinction between a desirable plant and a weed. Dicamba will kill the roots of any plant, including desirable shrubs and 2,4-D will kill broad leaf weeds but not harm grass, which is why we use it on dandelions in the lawn grass but if it drifts onto a bed of pansies – bad news!

Read the label! Will a pint of diluted, ready-to-use product be all you need or would a gallon of the active ingredient be a much better buy? Maybe you could share with a neighbor. Or the whole neighborhood could attack kudzu at the same time.

How will you apply the herbicide? Do you need to mix with water and spray the leaves? Or is it to be applied at full strength to the freshly-cut woody stump? Is this product less effective at certain temperatures or particular weather conditions?

And if you have questions as to how to attack a particular weed, call the Extension Helpline 828-255-5522.

Written by Extension Master Gardener Volunteer Glenn Palmer.

Contact Us

Buncombe County Extension Office
49 Mount Carmel Road
Asheville, NC 28806
Helpline 828-255-5522

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