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Garden

Garden vegetables, annual flowers, and perennial trees and shrubs can provide a veritable "garden of Eden" around your home, but even that garden comes with the occasional pest. This page will give you information on IPM methods to control these pests in the home vegetable garden.

An IPM approach to suppressing pests includes knowing what encourages the pests and how they complete their life cycles - whether insects with larval stages, or weeds that propagate by seed and root fragments. How many beds of quackgrass have been rototilled - only to spread the plants even further by root fragments! Also, knowing how to encourage the natural enemies of common garden insects pests can lead to a more diverse, beautiful and largely pest-free garden.

IPM Tips for the Home Garden (Adapted from NY IPM)

• Grow pest-resistant plants. Choices should be well suited to soil and climate.
• Use selective pesticides. Insecticidal soaps are effective against aphids, mealybugs, whiteflies, scale, and some other pests. Bacillus thuringiensis or "Bt" is a bacterium that kills leaf-eating caterpillars and other specific insects; it is sold in garden stores.
• Grow healthy plants. Pay attention to organic matter, watering, and other conditions for healthy plants. Don't grow closely related plants (e.g., tomatoes, peppers, eggplant) in the same location each year. Rotation prevents insect infestations, decreases the spread of diseases, and lessens the depletion of soil nutrients.
• Encourage beneficial insects, which kill pests, by growing large, showy composite flowers for them to land on and feed (such as Queen Anne's lace, daisies, fennel, dill) and by limiting pesticide applications.
• Destroy diseased plant materials, and clean up plant debris at the season's end.

For more information on pests and how to use IPM in the home garden see our
Home Garden Pest Problem Solver