Ep. 208 IPM: Techniques, Tools, and Tips for a Healthier Garden | #GoodGrowing

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb , Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. IPM sounds like a setup to a joke, but I promise it is going to be gardening related today. We're gonna go into IPM, and we'll talk about what that all means. But you know I'm not doing this by myself.

I am joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.

Hello, Chris. Do you practice IPM in your garden?

Gah. I yes. I practice all kinds of IPM. Safe IPM. That's me.

Yeah. I'm a good IPMer.

Good.

People are like just some people probably know what we're talking about. Right? Some others are like, oh my gosh. What's happening? What just what what are they doing right now?

Yeah. Alright. Promise to stick with us for a little bit, folks.

So before before we get into telling people what IPM actually is if they don't know. So you did you did send me an article last week that we should probably talk about about lightning in a particular was particular species of trees in the South America and how it's beneficial.

Yes. In the the tropics of South America, the specific tree was Dipteryx or Dipteryx olyphera. And it is a particular tree that grows in the rainforest in South South America. And it's one of those that it's like it's like in a movie, you know, it's one of those late blooming stories, you know, the child, he's sick all the time, and he just struggles to to to survive. But then once they get into adulthood, they're, like, strong, and they're they're tough.

So that is this this particular species of tree in that not as many of these younger trees survive to adulthood to become these massive rain forest trees. But when they do, they are super tough. So tough that they you know, just observers I think at first and now looking more scientifically at it are seeing that they are surviving lightning strikes. And which is interesting because trees, if you're the biggest, tallest tree with the largest or widest crown or canopy, you've now become primary target for lightning strikes. You know, these this is a case where, yes, lightning does in fact strike here more than once.

They they're just kind of more of that this kind of that beacon or that lightning rod for lightning strikes. And so they're they're that bigger target. But these particular trees, they seem to survive more often than not lightning strikes, which wind up killing all of the smaller competitive trees around them, and even a lot of those tropical vines that grow on the branches of of these trees that get struck by lightning. And so it sheds off all these vines. It it reduces competition around it, and they see kind of a a jolt of growth in these trees from this lightning strike.

So pretty fascinating idea here that there's potential evolutionary pathway here for lightning surviving survivorship.

So lightning isn't all bad.

If you are this particular tree.

Yes. There's the exception to the rule we always talk about.

That that's true. Yes. Yes. And they don't really know why. There's theories, but, know, basically, like, there's, you know, different species of trees have different types of woody fibers, different physiological traits within them, know, their vessel structures might be a little different.

Maybe they hold a little bit more water in certain parts of their trees or their cells. They might have different like metal ions, like concentrations of them throughout their tissue. And so all of that, you know, these are just theories. They don't really know why these trees are able to have a low resistance to lightning, which just allows the lightning to sort of pass right through them into all of the surrounding trees. So, yeah, I just very interesting article was sent to us by a viewer on the of the podcast.

So, yeah, thanks for sending that. It was a very very good read. So I enjoyed it. And it I I grew up on a hill out in the middle of the country, and so I we had lots of lightning strikes around the house, on the house, of the trees. Yeah.

So we we lost a lot of trees to lightning when growing up.

Sounds like you need a cold hearty version of of this one.

I yes. I program. Yeah. And I think it's one of those with the big wide buttresses, these big tropical trees that's just like they flare out to this, I don't know, just this humongous thing at the base. So, yeah, I'll probably dive more into this topic later just just doing some reading then because I find this interesting.

So but we can share the article down below in the show notes. Ken, what are we talking about today? What is IPM?

IPM is integrated pest management. So, basically, we're using multiple, I guess, multiple different ways of managing pests in our landscapes instead of just using the the all too popular spray and pre approach. So we see a pest, we reach for the pesticide, we spray it, hope for the best. We're using other other strategies to to manage these pests besides chemical.

I see. Okay. So we're we're taking a multipronged approach here to to take care of a pest. But what are those pests? This seems pretty relative to folks.

Right? Like, you know, my pest might not be your pest.

I think you just have to look at our lawns to to figure that one out. So Yeah. Basically, a pest is is any organism, whether that's an insect, a plant, which we would call a weed, a pathogen, a mammal, a bird, what have you, that's seen as harmful, annoying, causing some sort of damage, whether that's to our plants, the environment in general, property, humans, what have you. So, basically, it's it's an unwanted object. So, you know, we think about creeping Charlie.

I think majority of people would consider that a weed regardless of where it's growing. I mean, I considered weed. My yard's still a good chunk of Creeping Charlie, but it's not a big enough pain for me to do anything about. But I would still consider that a weed. Japanese beetles.

I have I have yet to meet somebody who wants Japanese beetles, even though they are beautiful insects. Again, they're they're feeding on ornamental plants. They're feeding out fruits. They're feeding on vegetables. So we consider that a pest.

Diseases, I can't maybe like your tulip break virus. Maybe that would be a a desirable disease, but most people do not find diseases to be desirable in their plants, especially if it's a a plant they want. You know, maybe if it's a weed and it's got a disease, you may be happy. But again, diseases, fungus, bacteria, virus, what have you, people would consider a pest.

I I readily encourage fire blight and calorie pear, you know, just put that one out there.

The exception to the rule.

I take fire blight infected pears and throw them in other ranch and other trees. No. I don't do that, folks. I don't. That'd be mean.

Only on my own property. That's right. That's right. Don't don't do that to someone else.

But then we've got things like, like squirrels. So some people actively feed squirrels, others they don't want to squirrel around. That that's where we start kind of getting into that. Is that a pest? Is it or not?

Birds? You know, a lot of people feed birds. But when they're we have a drought and they're getting into your garden and eating your your tomatoes or your peaches or anything like that, we consider them a pest. So I think there's there's some organisms out there that we will widely consider pests, doesn't matter who it is. There's others that's going to depend on on the individuals, whether they think it's a pest.

And then it may be the situation too, where birds normally are fine, but when they start eating our crops and they're pests. So it's it's a continuum. It's all shades of gray now, not black and white like we like to make it a lot of times.

Yeah. I had someone we were talking this morning, they were master gardener and they were saying how they were excited that the snakes were out. This was a particular person who likes snakes. They want snakes in their yard. And they caught the crows getting the garter snakes out of their yard.

And the crows, I didn't know they did this behavior, but they will drown them or dunk them in the birdbath. Like, I don't know if they're drowning them or if they're cleaning them or what. I don't know what they're doing with the snake and why they're submerging in the water. But she was so upset because, like, snakes, I wanted I wanted these snakes and these crows come in and they just start eating them all. And so, yeah, it's darn crow birds.

I I do like birds except for starlings. I don't like starlings, European starlings. That's I see the starlings at the suet feeder and that's when I I unleash my hounds, my two little labs.

So hopefully, she didn't try to rescue the snake from the crows. I don't know if you wanna make a bunch of crows angry at you.

No. You don't wanna get a murder of crows angry at you. No. No. Don't do that.

But, they're they were cleaning their she's she's watched it happen. She's like because someone else like, well, you sure it wasn't a raccoon? Because raccoons do that too. She's like, nope. I watched him pick up the snake and put it in the bird bath.

It was behaviors they'd never seen before.

Yeah. Yeah. Snakes would be another example. Mhmm. I would be excited if I found a snake in my yard, but some people would be running for the shovel and that'd be the end

of that. Come visit me, Ken, where the water snakes will chase you back into the house. Oh, okay. So pest vary. It's relative.

And so we're gonna utilize integrated pest management or IPM as a strategy to minimize damage to our plants that we want to to keep from being damaged. So how do we start the system? Like, you you know, alright. Yeah. IPM.

But what's the foundation here? Like, what where where are we beginning?

Yeah. So a lot of the conventions. So IPM, it's it's again, this is comprehensive approach to managing pests, whether we're defining that as insects, weeds, pathogens, what have you. And in a lot of cases, we'll use insects, for example, we've got this population of insects. We're going to use these strategies and we're typically, we're not going to completely eliminate pests in the case of insects or something like that.

Because we're trying to use environmentally sound practices, economically sound practices. And if we want to completely eliminate something, a lot of times we're getting away from that, those environmentally, economically sound practices. So we're getting a lot times we're getting populations down, especially for insects, to a level where they're not causing like considerable or really noticeable damage. So we're not losing a lot of yield on our crops. They're not for ornamental plants, it's not causing, you know, so much aesthetic damage that it's it's noticeable.

You know, there there'll be some chewing here and there, but it's not detracting from the overall appearance of the plant. Typically not completely wiping something out if we're taking the IPM approach. And I think there's a lot of ways people talk about IPM a lot of times to talk about them as a toolbox. So we've got our different tools in the toolbox to manage pass. When I was in school, you know, way I learned it was like as a structure.

So basically any good structure, you've got a good foundation. You you can do have all the fancy pillars and all that, but foundation crumbles, it all falls apart. So kind of the foundation for our for IPM or pest management is, you know, basically understanding what our plants are supposed to look like, the requirements that they need to grow. So is it, you know, the sun exposure, you know, we're planting full sun and shade or vice versa, your plants are gonna struggle, and they're gonna be more prone to stuff. You know, what's that plant supposed to look like?

What is normal? And that can vary depending it's going to vary from species to species, cultivar to cultivar. A lot time, you know, nowadays with more and more cultivars, there's some weird looking stuff that doesn't look like the quote unquote normal plants. So knowing what it's what it's supposed to look like. So if you see something abnormal, is that just a cultivar, is that actually something that's causing the problem?

You know, if you've got you know, I think most people planting a garden. We're we're for the most part, we know what we're planting. Maybe for moving into a new house, we don't know what stuff is necessarily. But knowing what your plants are, familiarizing yourself with some of the common pests and diseases that show up, you're never gonna know all of them. And we don't know all the best that can attack grass just off the top of our head.

Alright. Pick your plant. Anyway, there there's so much stuff out there, and there's some oddball stuff that, you know, you read about, but you'll never actually see or, stuff like that. But what what commonly attacks it? So know what that stuff looks like, you know, in the case of diseases, what are those common symptoms?

Where does it attack? Just kind of get a general familiarity of what what potential problems are going to be so that when you are out in your landscape looking at stuff, you can recognize that stuff. And the sooner you you notice something going wrong, the sooner you can take action, the easier it is in a lot of cases to manage that problem if if you catch it early. So that's you know, you can use all the information to go out and kind of inform your scouting when you go out and do that.

You said we're we're not doing spray and pray. We're diagnosing plant problems. You know, we're going out and we're trying to figure out what is going on. And it has happened multiple times in my career here where I get the phone call after the fact, after whatever damage has happened or perceived damage has happened and after the pesticide has been applied, then I get the phone call like, well, what was this? I sprayed it.

I don't know what I was spraying for. Like, well, it's hard to tell after the fact. So but we can rule some things out. But really, think the key thing is, as you mentioned, Ken, is just being able to identify what is the difference between an environmental issue and living or a biotic issue. So this is kind of like abiotic versus biotic.

So something that would be a biotic issue would be aphid damage causing curling on your leaves or could be a particular leaf disease like anthracnose or mildew that causes curling on your leaves. Compare that to an environmental issue, which could be like frost damage, causes very similar looking curling or potentially even like herbicide damage, which would be a human caused thing, environmental issue drifting onto your plants. So there's they all look very similar. And so I think it is is being able to go out and sort of, as you mentioned, scoping out what's going on around your garden, around your landscape, looking for those patterns. And we're diagnosing stuff.

We're not guessing. Well, kind of still do sometimes, but we

Educated guesses.

And that's what we learned in science class. Yes. That's right. So we're making educated guesses. Yeah.

And I would say from, like, the, like, the landscape industry, when we talk about the aesthetics of plants, you know, people don't really notice when their plants are being damaged at first. You know, there's there's a lot of insect feeding that can go on. There's a lot of disease issues that can manifest before we start noticing. You know, we're not up in the canopy of our shade trees every day like we are when we're picking tomatoes or picking peppers or something where we're like face to face with those plants. And so I think in that aesthetic world, our threshold for damage is much higher than if we were in the vegetable garden.

And for some people, if you're looking at your turf grass, there sometimes you can not have a blade out of place, and the the alarm bells start ringing in their heads and they they start, you know, not start trying to figure out, you know, what's going on, what else do I need to apply to to fix my lawn. I I I find that there's a lot of people that are very sensitive about vegetables and lawns and hydrangeas too. I get a lot of hydrangea hyper hydrangea questions. So so yeah. That but but basically, this point I'm trying to make is that the aesthetic landscape, the ornamental landscape, usually our threshold for pests is is higher.

Yes. And even it's gonna vary on on individuals. I'm willing to bet that my damage threshold on aesthetic plants is gonna be much higher than than many other people. I it's gonna take a lot for me to actually do something about something eating, my ornamental plants. Basically, it's it's basically I have to risk like the plant dying before I'm going do anything about it in a lot of cases.

And maybe that's their thought too. Like they see damage and they think this could cause this plant to die. Whereas, you know, you and I, we're, you know, we're at least a little bit hopefully, we know a little bit more than the average person, but I I won't make that claim in public, only to you dear podcast folks. I I would say we just we know that insects eat plants and that plants get sick, and it's usually not not all the time, but but a lot of times, it'll be okay. You know, the plant will recover, you can cut that that particular disease off.

You know, there's things that you can do that won't kill that plant. So it's not a panicky moment for us at least. I think that explains when I would walk into the kitchen, you know, bleeding everywhere and my mom who was a nurse would be like, you're fine.

I was panicking. She was pulsating. Yeah. Bone's not sticking out. You're fine.

Go back outside. Put a band aid on.

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of times when we talk about pests, we I think a lot of times when we talk about plants, make them out to be these really delicate things that, you know, one little thing goes wrong. It's it's game over. But plants are are pretty resilient, especially once they've become established in the landscape. They can you know, we're painting with a broad brush here, but they can handle a fair amount of damage before things start going south.

Okay.

Well well, good. Yeah. So we've we've we're laying our foundation down. So let's put some names to these to our foundation blocks here. So kind of at the core is the the science of it all is the the taxonomy, you know, knowing your plant, knowing also potentially your pest, the biology, you know, you know, how and then the ecology and so how all that interacts with each other in those relationships.

And then maybe on top of that, we have our scouting, which is us actively doing something out in the garden, not necessarily spraying anything, but we're just being observant. And then our thresholds, like, you know, what where do we draw the line? We're like, okay. I need to do something. I must intervene here.

So we have our foundation laid, Ken. I think it's time to keep building up this structure though. So you mentioned pillars to what you learned about in terms of IPM as a as a college lad. What are these so called pillars that you mentioned?

So so our pillars are our actual management techniques that are they're kinda doing the the lifting of our pest management program are gonna be our cultural controls, our management strategies, our physical, our mechanical management strategies, our biological, and then chemical control strategies. So we're gonna use these four different things in our landscapes to try to manage the pests. And go back to the scouting real quick. When we're scouting, ideally, we're going out in our landscapes once a week. And we're not you have to do like a thorough spend hours doing this, just go out into your plants, look for anything that's not, you know, air quotes, normal here.

You know, we would talk about insects. A lot of our smaller insects, aphids, mites, things like that. They're like the new succulent growth. So looking at that, flipping over leaves, see if there's anything on the underside. But just go out once a week, however often you can, and just go out and look.

You know, you you planted all the plants, might as well go out and enjoy them. And while you're enjoying them, look for anything that may be that may not look right. And if it doesn't look right, then you can focus in on that plant and and investigate further. So if you see a problem, you need to actually look around a little bit more, see if it's just that plant, if it's other plants being affected, if it's only a particular part of the plant, you know, where where are these symptoms happening on the plant? So Yes.

So go out and enjoy your landscape, folks. It's an order.

Yes. Let's get a nice out. No more excuses.

That's right. That's right.

Get a raincoat. Be alright. Just don't touch the plants so you don't spread disease.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. You don't touch wet plants. That's that's that's the thing with vegetable gardens a lot, though. Like, they're like, don't work in your vegetable garden after a rain when the leaves are wet because you could potentially spread disease that way.

And if you work in a greenhouse, particularly if you're growing sensitive crops, would have to, like, sanitize your hands, you have to sanitize your boots. Sometimes they make you put on like a Tyvek suit or something. Yeah. They don't mess around with disease.

Can't smoke because you have TSV.

Tobacco mosaic virus?

TSV. Yeah. That can survive through your smoking and stuff.

So Mhmm. Yeah. Yep. So oh, yep. We digressed, Ken, into disease controls in a greenhouse.

But so yes. Back to our our pillars, though. Our first one, you had mentioned cultural management. I mean, I feel like I'm cultured. I drink middle priced wines.

I don't mind craft beers, but I'll also go into the beer fridge for some cheap stuff too. So I'm cultured. What else do I need for this one? Am I talking about the wrong thing here?

I may not be the person to ask. I'm not very cultured. Oh, no. So so for cultural management, basically, we're we're maintaining our plant health. So I think this is these are all important, I think this is the one where, you know, if if you do if you do this one right, this can probably go the longest, go the furthest in managing pests because we're trying to maintain plant health.

So just like with with people, you know, when you're, you know, when we're stressed, not getting enough sleep, we're more prone to get sick, because our immune system, it kind of gets suppressed. Same thing with plants. When they're stressed, they're not growing well, they're more susceptible to attack from pathogens, insects, what have you. So we're getting into the right plant at the right place at the right time. So, you know, again, we're not putting out we're not putting full sun plants and shade and vice versa.

The plants are going to struggle on that. Know, matching the plant needs with the proper conditions that you have. So if you've got acidic soils, you could put blueberries, azaleas, stuff like that on the ground. If you don't have that, you're going have to amend the soil or grow them in pots, because they're going to struggle in, soils that have pH that are too high or vice versa. You get higher pH and pH is too low.

You know, the drainage. So if you need well drained soils, you're not planting that in in areas where water stands or you need sandy soils, you're not doing that in our well, our typical Illinois soils that's got decent amount of clay content, stuff like that. Right time, you know, that's spring right now. So we're recording this April 15. We've had some 80 degrees, close to 80 degree days, 70 degree days.

Hopefully, you know, vegetable gardens, can put out tomatoes and peppers yet cause we're still getting down in the thirties at night. And those plants are going to suffer and good chance they're going to die. So properly planting proper planting time. So that proper fertility. So soil testing occasionally and checking that pH, what the fertility levels are like.

So if you if you are deficient in something, good chance the plant's going to tell you, you're going to have symptoms of that. But then, you know, you've got that soil test to back that up and then you can amend or fertilize accordingly. Looking at resistant cultivars, I think this is especially for, I guess, newer gardeners and especially at food crops looking at resistant cultivars. So typically, we're doing this for diseases. So diseases will attack susceptible plants.

If, you know, if the pathogens there, the conditions are right, the plants are gonna get infected. When we have resistance, they they still may get infected, but they're able to to survive that. The effect isn't as great. You don't lose as much yield or and stuff like that. So you can you're gonna be more successful with those resistant.

They can withstand that attack from those plants or from those pathogens. May they may not get infected or if you have, you know, perfect conditions, they may get infected, but it's not going be nearly as bad as susceptible. So looking at resistant cultivars for disease can help, not going to say eliminate problems, but can really reduce the amount of problems you're going to have potentially by doing that. You can do stuff like pruning. So we're talking about trees, you know, pruning out crossing branches so they're not rubbing, opening up wounds so pathogens and insects can can get easier, getting easier, you know, good sanitation, removing disease by materials so that inoculum, isn't there, that's able to spread.

Mulching, you know, we talk about mulch a lot. We've got a whole podcast episode on mulch. But putting that down to help helping retain that that soil moisture, it can help, you know, in in the winter, help with that frost freeze cycle, help with heat prevent heaving, of plants, especially with newly planted stuff. Water use. So we get into a drought, you know, if there's no water restrictions, making sure you're watering stuff.

And if we're getting plenty of water and you've got, like, an automatic irrigation system, turning that off because too much water is gonna cause just as many problems is not enough. Both ways we're killing the roots of the plants. One is just because they're not getting enough and one's because they've got too much and they have no oxygen anymore and they die. So just just some examples of of ways we can do that. The cultural manager, wow.

This is gonna be kinda in hockey is before we even plant. We're looking at this stuff.

Now I get it now. Good plant culture. I I understand. So right plant, right place. Take care of it the way it needs to be taken care of.

Gotcha, Ken. I I see why I have so many problems in my own yard. I just thought I could throw my my own cultural personalities at these landscape plants, and they would respect me.

Get a get

a monocle for

your plants. It's too much better.

My favorite thing for plants is putting monocles and googly eyes on them. Yes. How'd you know? Alright. So we have we have good culture for our plants.

And then the next pillar was talking about physical stuff, mechanical stuff. So this is obviously where I go and buy all my tools. Right? And help me do what I need to do to to have a good time in the landscape, you know, play with all my toys outside. What are we talking about when we talk about mechanical control?

If if if gadgets are your thing, yeah, mechanical, physical is is is the one for

you. Yes.

So this we're trying to basically, we're trying to physically eliminate or prevent pests from getting in. Cultivating the soil for weeds, things like tobacco, tomato hornworm will overwinter in the soil so you can cultivate the soil, try to destroy those peep up, prevent them from from coming out in the spring. Again, pruning pruning out disease plant material, pruning out, you know, bagworms, webworms, things like that on trees. If you have really high populations, you don't wanna hand pull them all. Hand pull or handpicking is still probably probably better for the tree, than slopping off a branch, but you can you can still do it.

Just hand pulling weeds or whatever gadgets you wanna get for for weed pulling. There's there's a lot out there, for that. Barriers. So, you know, last year with the cicadas, you know, if you put up netting over a newly planted tree or shrub, you were practicing, IPM there, trying to keep those, in the case of cicadas off, so they're not laying eggs. You see it a lot in in, like fruit, bushes, raspberries, blueberries, sometimes putting netting over those plants so birds can't get to the fruit and eat them and stuff.

So basically, you're you're keeping them out of those plants so they can't get to them and and take your harvest from you. And then your other mechanical devices, you name it. Your flame weeders and all of that kind of I

was just gonna ask you, where does fire fit into all of this? Would that be Is

it the physical? Is it mechanical? Yeah. Physical. Yes.

Okay. It's not biological. Fire is alive. Like in the movie Backdraft. So, okay.

The this is I like mechanical. I do a lot of mechanical, mostly with my hands. I don't have very that many toys. I do have a cultivator, a couple different types of those. And when we cultivate to control things, you mentioned hornworm, but also like seedlings, weed seedlings, we're just kind of like scratching the soil surface.

We're not really we're not digging. We're just taking these cultivators. I have a cleaner hoe, I have a wire weeder, you know, I have a couple other items. We're just sort of scratching up that surface, dislodging those weed seedlings, which is way easier to do that than if you would let those weeds get away from you and then you have to bend over and like physically pull them out. So, you know, just there are tools that are made to help you out.

I I often equate a lot of these garden tools as like kitchen gadgets. I feel like the world of, like, kitchen gadgets, like, that that whole economy, they have all these kind of weird things to help you or not not really I don't I guess it's to help you do simple tasks in the kitchen. I remember my wife, she got this this one thing, and it, like, it's not the infomercial one. It's like the knockoff of the infomercial one where you put your strawberry in there and you slap it and it chops it up. She you didn't get the brand names, got the the knockoff one.

But I feel like the gardening world has that stuff like that too, so you have to be careful. I think that there's some core tools out there that we probably talked about on the show multiple times before. But but yeah, there's I I do caution people sometimes watch out for some of those gimmicky garden products. Just just keep your eye out for those. There are certain things that I reach for more often than others.

Yeah. I'd say yeah, for colonial hoe, stirrup hoe. Those are I do for use for a lot of my weeding. It's kind of like, you know, ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You you get on that early, get them all their seedlings.

It's going save you a lot of time. You can spend an hour weeding in the spring or you can spend five hours in the summer trying to hand pull all that stuff. You know, people are busy and stuff. But if if you can if you can get the time to get it while it's little, you're gonna save yourself a lot more time down the road.

Okay. Very good. Well, the next pillar that we're gonna be talking about with IPM, notice folks, we haven't even gotten to chemicals yet. Our next one is biological controls. Ken, this one sounds a little scary to me.

Feels like there's a lot of horror movies that have been based upon some of these things that happen in the real world. Describe biological controls for me, and I'm gonna hide.

Yeah. I'm trying to contain myself because it make make us go two hours here.

This is your favorite part. This is

my favorite one. So so this we're using natural enemies to manage our pests. So usually in home gardens, this is we're using insects or other related arthropods to control other insects. Now there are, you know, if you want to talk about weed management, you know, with invasive weeds, sometimes they'll bring in insects that will feed on those. I guess for the purpose of our of our podcast today, we're just going to talk about insects, mites feeding on other insects, and mites for the most part.

So we've got things like predators. So these are actively consuming. They're pretty a lot of times they're active. They're running around trying to catch stuff. We've got, you know, spider mites.

So two spot spider mites, common pests in our ornamental plants, not a lot of other plants. You know, there are I'd say people are probably familiar with pest mites, but there are also beneficial mites that are predatory. They'll go out and eat other mites, mite eggs, sometimes maybe really small insects or insect eggs that they'll feed on. So again, just because you see a mite doesn't mean it's it's actually going to be a pest. Typically, you know, kind of general rule, our predatory mites are move much more quickly.

They're actively moving around, whereas our plant feeding mites are a little slower. Not not in too big of a hurry a lot of times. And if you smear them, you smush them and smear them. Usually the plant feeding ones are going to smear green, whereas the predatory ones are going be more of a reddish orangish color. So if so again, if you see a mite, again, it doesn't mean we're going to spray.

We want to figure out if it's actually something that's going to warrant taking some kind of action against it. Ladybugs, lady beetles, whatever you want call them, both the larvae and the adults will feed on small soft bodied insects, so aphids. Some will feed on mealybugs, some will feed on scale. There's even some species that feed on powdery mildew. So they're the kind of we got a whole gamut of of things that they'll feed on.

And this is one where we talk about actually identifying the problem. I don't know. I'm to say this is my favorite one, probably my least favorite one I question I get, but, you know, people come in, they've got some damage to their plants. They see these little insects run around. They spray and they bring them in, wouldn't know what it was.

Well, they were lady beetle larvae and they just sprayed and killed all your lady beetle larvae. So again, because those larvae look nothing like the adults. It's, you know, unless you know what you're looking at, it's not really intuitive. Oh, yeah. That's a lady beetle larvae.

Again, proper identification is going to be important. We've got, it's like lacewing larvae, kind of like alligator shaped, will feed on small soft bodied insects and there's all kinds of different predatory insects out there. So again, just because you see an insect doesn't mean it's a pest. We got parasites, parasitoids, so we got parasoid wasps are usually what we talk about. So these are small wasps, like the size of a gnat, we're not talking yellow jacket, Bald faced hornet size here.

Small wasp lay their eggs inside of an insect, so aphids would be an example. Wasp will larvae will eat the inside of the aphid, it'll pupate inside, cut a hole, come out, kinda like movie alien that just burst out of there. If you have hornworms in your in your garden, your tomato plants, see all those little white things on there? Those are the cocoons of wasps that were inside that caterpillar eating it. They've burrowed out, just want a cocoon, and they'll go out and, you know, as one of the emerged adults go out and attack other caterpillars and stuff.

So if you see something like that, leave that in your landscape. That caterpillar's not eating anymore and you're gonna have dozens potentially dozens of caterpillar or wasps coming out of that that'll attack stuff. In the case of aphids, they'll they'll become mummies, they'll kind of inflate a little bit, look kind of brown and papery. Those have all been attacked by parasitoid wasps. So again, either of these parasites, parasitoids, you know, we see these pests, we want to look a little bit closer to make sure something's not already managing those.

Syrphid fly larvae, predators, they look kinda like slug. Slug like. Yeah. So again, but so look closely if you've got some of these smaller pest insects to see if you've got any of these natural enemies there attacking them. And then we've got pathogens.

So just like people and plants, insects have diseases that will attack them as well.

I've heard like fungal infections of insects are responsible for like, one of the reasons why we're not like up to our necks in insects. Like like, there's a lot of disease spread that happens in the insect world, fungal, bacterial, viral. Like, you know, we we get sick with them and so do insects. We're all we're all animals here.

Yeah. I would say, yeah, with that and other insects and things eating them. I mean, nature does a pretty good job of keeping things under control. So when when we get involved as people, we throw everything out of whack and things get out of balance.

So could we bring in other insects to help us out? I get so many, like, emails and ads pop up like buy ladybugs for your garden. Is that a good idea?

So so you can do it. I'd say a lot times when you're buying them, you let them go and they just disperse everywhere. They don't really stay where you want them to stay. So I'd say a lot times if you're if you're buying stuff, especially if they're really mobile as adults, you're usually doing that. So you'll be more successful if you're doing that in a contained environment, greenhouse environment, something like that, because they can't escape from there.

So and yeah. You see ladybugs for sale a lot of times in garden catalogs. And a lot of times those are wild harvested, usually from California and stuff. So there there's no issues with that. But you know, when you're they're basically hibernating and then you let them go and they're all discombobulated and stuff.

And you see like praying mantids, the Ootheca for sale. I mean, I I mean, I think praying mantids are cool. I like them and stuff, but I wouldn't spend the money on those personally. Usually, they're selling the Chinese mantid, which is an introduced species. You know, they can cause problems for native, mantid populations.

And, you know, they're they're generalists, they're gonna eat anything they can they can get their hands on. I guess their forelimbs on. So that's beneficial, what have you. And, you know, they if there's not enough food, they will cannibalize each other. So, you know, you may have dozens of them coming out, but you may only end up with a couple.

So they're not they're not the most efficient predators in landscaping. You find one in your landscape, you know, leave it. But I wouldn't personally want to spend the money on on bringing those in. I think what we're really do for the biological tool is kind of setting up our landscape so that they are kind of inviting or welcoming to them that conservation or manipulative biological control. So maintaining our habitats, that our habitats are suitable for their development.

So we're helping to draw in the adults. The adults are there. The adults have food sources, a lot of them. There's a lot of the adults will feed on pollen and nectar as adults. You eat things like like lady beetles early in the year, there's not a lot of other insects out that they're going to feed on.

They can supplement their diet with pollen. And then when the pest populations come out, they're going to be there because they've got that that food alternate food sources to keep them around and they can go out and attack, other things. You know, things with smaller flowery, lot these insects are small, don't have very big mouth parts, so smaller flowers, carrot family plants. So if I get carrots in my garden that bolt, I just leave them, let them flower, use that as a food source for them. A lot of our herbs.

Typically when we're growing herbs, we want to cut the flowers off because that reduces those essential oils, which gives us the flavors and the aromas and stuff. But I'm not a big herb person, so I don't really care if they flower. But like our mints and stuff, I let those flower. And then those are very attractive to various beneficial insects and stuff.

Yeah. If we're attracting our beneficial insects, we're attracting our pollinators. We're helping our amphibians. We're helping our other wildlife out there. So yeah, you're setting up good habitat in your yard.

I like that. I like that approach.

Yeah. And if you've got a pollinator landscaping, you're already doing doing this. I mean, they'll go to that. So these are the lacks pollinators, as well potentially. It's not a it's not like an either or.

You're you're doing both. And if you're incorporating flowers into your your vegetable gardens or doing edible landscaping, you've already potentially already doing some of this already. But if, you know, if we're doing this, we're trying to draw these in, then we got to be careful about our pests ideas because pesticides are killing our pest insects. We're gonna more than likely, a lot of them are also going to kill those beneficial insects as well.

Well, Ken, speaking of pesticides, we've covered three of the four pillars of IPM, and we have arrived at the pillar, you know, we call chemicals or maybe pesticides would be a better word for that. Because as some people I I talk to like to hammer in my head, they say, well, everything's chemicals. So I gotcha. I hear you folks. I understand.

That's just the vernacular we use in the gardening world. But yes, the the chemical use or the pesticide use that that last tool in our toolbox or this final pillar of our structure here, the thing that I I feel like people get confused, I I tried to do this. I tried to, like, retrain society to use the term pesticide correctly. Let me try one more time. A lot of times people, when they hear pesticide, they think something to kill bugs.

They don't think of it as anything else. But the way we use the term pesticide is like it's like an umbrella term that covers multiple different types of chemicals. So a pesticide being the umbrella term, we have all of these other names for these specific sprays that we use for things. So for instance, to kill our bugs or our insects, we would call them insecticides. And then to kill our plants, we would call them herbicides.

To control some of our fungal diseases, we would call them fungicides. And then of course, we have repellents or we have things that kill mammals like rodents, we call those rodenticides. And all of these things fall within within that umbrella of pesticides. I've tried explaining that many times before, and people just say, yes. But I need to kill, you know, my let's see, imported cabbage worm.

What pesticide do I use? Okay. Like, you are using that term correctly, but also not. So it's insecticide. Am I being too picky?

I'm probably being too picky.

No. I see. I don't use pesticides, but I use herbicides or something. Yes. Yes.

So basically, you know, side is kill. And so pesticide would just be you're killing pests. And then Mhmm. We're breaking it down to insecticide is killing insects and so on and so forth.

Yes. So yes. We we we have a gamut of of insecticides. Actually, the list that I mentioned, you have a list that's like so long you the font's so small, you can't see all of the different, you know, sides that that there truly are out there.

Yeah. I'm not even sure that's a a comprehensive list. You know, mollocides and for killing snails and slugs and ovaciides of eggs and some pisocides for fish and

Miticides for mites.

Yeah. You name it. There's there's a side for it.

Figured out how to kill it. And so, yeah, these are chemicals that we use to control stuff. So but but really the whole goal, the whole idea with the first three pillars of this IPM structure is that not all of it rests on this one chemical pillar. We're, like, we're spreading the load out. You know, we're we're we're we're trying to reduce maybe the chemical input into the environment or to at least make it more targeted, targeted towards a particular life a part of their life cycle where they're most vulnerable to it, where we don't have to use higher concentrations or more volume of a particular chemical on whatever it is we're trying to control.

That, though, just plays back into the foundation of the structure, the ecology, the biology, taxonomy, all of that. It all works together. And yeah. I we'll we'll have pictures of this. Right, Ken?

Can we post pictures of this structure that you've created on on the web? For folks listening, we're we're trying our best to explain, but you probably have all kinds of wacky things to visualize in your head.

That's taken to our our crude PowerPoint.

Yeah. There's a diagram. Shapes on top of each other. That's what we're gonna do. Yeah.

I think with with chemicals, pesticides, however you want to classify it, I think a lot of times when people talk about IPM, it's used as a last resort. But I would personally push back on that a little bit because sometimes chemicals are gonna be the best option, for managing a particular pest. So, you know, personally, I don't really like using a last resort because sometimes, it is gonna be the best option, but you need to do it early. And if you try other things and it doesn't work, now you're out of luck. You know, think like something like squash bugs.

If you, you know, try doing this, that, and the other to manage them, but you don't get them early enough, they become adults. Chemicals we can buy as as homeowners don't really do a whole lot to those adults. So that's one of those, you know, you're scouting, you see them, you're smashing the eggs, but you just see the nymphs everywhere. You're probably better off spraying than trying to to hand smash or sending out boards that they can congregate under. You know, you kinda get to that point where it's maybe you can do other stuff, but if if you don't do it, you know, now you're too late and you're you're you're in serious trouble, so to speak.

So

should we get into this, Ken? What is a what about synthetic versus biore biorational or or organic types of chemicals? Do you have any thoughts on that debate? How how many how many comments would you like today?

This week? I mean, out of the office for the next few weeks. Yeah. So it like so, you know, we as as humans, we like categorizing things. So pesticides, anything else we can categorize multiple ways.

So as you know, how is it used, the target, what's controlling, how is it made synthetic, bi rational, context, stomach, how selective it is, all of that fun stuff. So know, our synthetic or bioretional synthetic is going to be man made stuff. So would be our organophosphates, carbamates, pyrethroids, which is a synthetic version of a bioretional pyrethrin. But it's more stable, It works a little bit better than than the natural, and we've improved upon it, so to speak. And biorational are coming from those natural materials.

So microbial pesticides, something like a BT would be a bioreactional. It's coming from a bacteria. Botanical or your plant extracts, horticultural soaps and oils are coming from natural materials. Know, is one better than the other? It just depends on what you're trying to control.

In a lot of cases, I would say, you know, some of our bioreactionals like the microbial, the BT, those can be very selective. You know, the BTK, the Krystakii strain of so BT is Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria. Kerstakii strain, you put that out for controlling caterpillars. They eat that, destroys the gut. Other insects eat it, it doesn't do anything to them.

The BTI israeliensis that works on something like mosquito dunks, works on aquatic fly larvae or fly larvae. Mosquitoes would be an example of that. Doesn't affect other types. So some of these can be fairly specifics here on having those non target organisms being affected. But, I don't know, think we'll say pet peeve of mine for the natural, know, just, you know, it's natural, so it's safe.

That's not really the case. I mean, are pesticides. They're intended to kill things. You know, a lot of these are gonna be less toxic than than some of our our synthetic types. But it doesn't mean we can be kind of cavalier about using them.

You still need to wear the proper equipment, you know, long pants, long sleeves, you know, whatever that label says. But typically, we're trying to cover as much of our bodies as we can, so we're not getting these chemicals, on our bodies and exposing ourselves. You know, there's some nicotine sulfate, rotenone, those aren't available anymore, but those used to be compost sites that you could buy. Those are natural products and those are much more toxic than some of these synthetic type insecticides. You know, nature is is constantly trying to protect itself from being eaten or killed.

So, I mean, the natural world's come up with some pretty toxic chemicals. So, you know, just because it's natural doesn't necessarily mean it's it's safe.

Yeah. We can't operate in that black and white world of, you know, blanket statements where organic equals safe. Yeah. I I actually think I did an organic gardening class when I first started with Extension, which would have been in 2012. Back then, you could still buy rotenone, which that is yeah.

It's one of those very potent organic

pesticides. LD fifty on that. It's a lethal dose that kills fifty percent of population. This is in milligrams per kilogram. So the lower the number, the more toxic it is.

Routine, I think it was an LD it an LD 50 of like 60. Mhmm. Whereas Carperil, which is, like I said, it was commonly recommended for, like, Japanese beetles. Seven would be an example. I don't I don't think there's many seven products, if any, that use it anymore.

But that used to be the the recommendation, you know, five, ten years ago. LD fifty on that is $5.90. So Rhoton is about 10 times more. Levodose is 10 times lower than than something like carbonyl. But again, even when you can't get Ronan anymore, but that is still considered a a natural product.

Mhmm. That's right. Naturalism toxin.

Mhmm. That's spray that on my tomatoes.

We're using that for for Botox. But, I mean, that's that's natural, but that you get too much of that.

Yeah. That makes you sick. You're done for. Yeah. Yes.

I I again, I say, doesn't matter what you use, just yeah. Develop a good IPM system. Develop a good foundation, your pillars, all of that. And yeah, you you you probably won't need to be reaching as much for a lot of the pesticides.

Hopefully. But yeah, just we'll try to move away from the the spray and braid just because you see and again, usually this is with insects. Just because you see an insect out there doesn't mean you need to grab a bottle of whatever and start spraying. Make sure it's actually something that's causing problems or will cause you problems. And again, lot of cases, there's other things we can do before we need to spray.

You know, there are combinations too. So we're trying to battle a particular weed called sericea lespedeza in a lot of our prairies. And so right now, we are using fire, which promotes its growth so that we can then time an herbicide application to then wipe it out. And it's kind of an experiment because we don't know what to do about this particular plant. It is a non native invasive plant that, you know, a lot of biologists are pretty concerned about.

It's taking over a lot of natural areas right now. I think it's gonna make some of these other herbaceous ones like teasel and things seem like child's play compared to sericea lespedeza. That is I think it's in your neck of the woods, Ken, and it is creeping into the southern portion of the counties that I serve currently. Oh, it's it's here, but it's just barely here.

Yeah. Think it was a few years ago. Went somewhere and somebody had some, if I remember right.

So use the tools in your toolbox. Build your foundation. Build your structure of IPM. Is that all we need to mention, Ken? Profit.

Yeah.

And then make all the money or not money if you're gardening at home. But but can not even a lot of our own pesticides, you know, we group them organic versus synthetic. We have many more categories within within this world of science here of pesticides. So there's different types of chemicals that are available that they act in different ways or they need and and because of this action, maybe they need to be applied in a certain way. So let's talk a little bit about that before we close out the show and that, you know, what are the different types of pesticides out there, you know, considering like how they need to be applied?

And is there anything that's left behind which we call residual effect?

Yes. Usually, when our pesticides again, categorizing different ways, but one way you could do is contact or systemic. So our contact pesticides, when we're using these, they have to come into contact with with whatever target pest they're trying to control. So, you know, if we're trying to con again, insects is that's what I always default to. But, you know, if we're trying to control an insect on a plant, we need make sure we have good coverage, get as much of that plant protected as we possibly can because if, you know, we miss, you know, or doing a shrub and you miss a whole branch, well those insects can feed on that, they're not going be exposed to that pesticide.

It's not going to work on them. So having that good control so they can come into contact or good coverage so they can come into contact with it, and be exposed, take it up, get covered in a way, however that's going to work to potentially kill them. With our contacts, that residual is going to be important. So the longer it sticks around, the more likely it is that pest is going to come into contact with it and we can control it. On the flip side, the longer it sticks around, the more likely non targeted organisms or things that we don't want to kill are going to come into contact with it.

So it's a little bit of a balancing act there. We want to stick around long enough that's going to protect that plant from, you know, new pests coming in. We don't want to stick around so long that it's going to start, you know, it's going to be there for for months and then our non target stuff is going to start coming into contact with us. So there's a bit of a balancing act there. What the right answer is, that's up to the individual to decide, you know, how they're going to balance that out.

I'd say a lot of the stuff we're using as homeowners, there's some residual, but they're not sticking around terribly long usually. With our systemic insecticides, we're applying this to the plants, to the soil, plants are taking that up and they're moving that insect that pesticide throughout the plant. So again, if we're doing, emerald ash borer control would be an example. We're doing this like imidacloprid, do that as a soil drench, plant roots will take that up, move that throughout the plant. Glyphosate, is a systemic herbicide, so that's supplied to leaves of the plant.

That herbicide is then moved down to the roots of the plant and it's killed. So these chemicals are moving within the plant to either protect it or kill it. Typically these are gonna take longer to work just because they have to move throughout the plant in order to do whatever they're gonna do. A lot of times they will last longer because they're not, and they're not exposed to UV light to the same extent as something that's on the surface of the leaf. So it's not being broken down as quickly.

And then, you know, how much it moves in the plant is going to vary on the chemical. Some of them will move long distances, you know, something like metocloprid, others may only move few inches, few centimeters. You know, it's basically from the leaf surface down into the leaf. So it's, it'll vary depending on on the chemical, how much movement within the plant you're gonna get.

And there's a lot of information that a person using these chemicals can glean by reading the label. That that is your resource. That is your information. That's why we always say read the label if you're going to use any type of pesticide. That label is technically the law.

Right, Ken? Like, it's a legal document.

Yep. Yeah. Basically, you buy that and you're you're agreeing that you're gonna follow the directions. They'll tell you how much to put on, how often you can do it, what plants you can put it on, what you can expect to control, what you need to wear when you're putting it on, how long you need to wait before you go back into those plants, how long you have to wait before you can harvest. Yeah.

Get it on you, what are you supposed to do, to pose risks to other organisms. So there's there's all kinds of information that I would say that well, I don't think it'd be counterfeel. So I think most people probably don't read the label. They just look to see how much do I need to put on, and that's the end of that. But maybe I have to.

I would say the first time you use it, read that thing cover to cover, know what you're doing. Ideally you do that every time, but at least once. Read through it, know what you're you're supposed to be doing.

Well, we got into a lot of issues with it last year because that is when the company Roundup changed their active ingredients. They took glyphosate out at least for the residential market, and they put, like, three, you know, different types of active ingredients in there, one of those had a residual effect on woody plants that glyphosate didn't have. And so if you were spraying Roundup with these three new active ingredients on a particular area, you now had to wait thirty days before planting any type of woody plant material in that area. And that wasn't true with the product before. And I think a lot of people got burned on that because they just missed that part of the label.

Yeah. Like you said, Ken, they're looking for how much do I apply. They got that, but they missed that part of like, here's here's what other things can be damaged and here are the residuals of these new chemicals that we put into here.

Yeah. Because before it would only it'd only be a couple days. And and yeah. I think we have point out, labels do change. So, you know, you may be used to, you know, I always get this product.

This is how I do it. Well, it changed on you. Mhmm. And you get just and yeah.

So we talked about bees last week, Ken. Real quick, how do we spray things to protect bees?

Well, don't spray would be one. But if you need to

step one, don't spray.

And, you know, if you need to spray, you know, that's you can take off the flowers of the plants, remove those flowers so the bees aren't gonna be visiting. Try doing that, you know, at dusk or dawn. I would say more like or if I had to pick dusk or dawn, I would do dusk. That just gives you that much more time for that dust side to dry out. And if you're doing it at dawn, you've only had a short time before the bees are coming back out.

But you know, you're doing a dusk, your your moths and stuff are may get hit. So that's, you know, that's not a perfect solution for that. As far as selectivity, you know, there's some pesticides that are gonna be less toxic than others to bees, but all of them so most of them are still gonna have some sort of toxicity to them. Purdue University had assuming it's still available, they have document. We'll have to try to find it.

We can put a link in the show notes on that gives the toxicity of different pesticides to honeybees. So honeybees is what all the research is done on because, you know, we can keep them in hives and they're they're easy to manage that way. Whereas native bees, it's a little more difficult, but at least honeybees, you've got an idea of of what is going to be toxic to them or or more toxic I don't think. So looking at the least less toxic stuff, it's still potentially going to affect them. I think more and more research is finding that even low doses, sub lethal doses are still having negative effects on honeybees, bumblebees, other types of bees as well.

And it's not just insecticides, fungicides is going to mess with their the gut flora as well. So be careful with fungicides as well. And looking at less toxic stuff, changing the time of day, or removing flowers if possible. So they're not visiting those plants while they're they're being sprayed or after they've been sprayed.

And folks, we usually do get some hate when we talk about using pesticides on the show. Just wanna make sure to know that that what Illinois Extension does is that we deliver kind of an unbiased look at things. We want to give you information so that you can make a decision about what to do in your yard. We are not here trying to tell you what to do. So feel free if you wanna make any comments.

You're you're more than welcome to, but just know that, you know, we're not trying to steer anyone in any direction. This providing you information for you to make your own choices.

Yes. And we will. We'll keep talking about pesticides until they are banned Mhmm. Which I don't think is coming.

Probably not coming. Clear. Banned or or not needed. Yeah. Well, one of those things.

Yeah. So one of those two things. Well, that was a lot of great information about pesticides and how they fit into an overall IPM structure. Integrated pest management, not the start to a junior high joke. Well, the Good Growing podcast is a production University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by me, Chris Enroth.

A special thank you, Ken. Thank you so much. You know what? You sound like you might have studied this at one point in time in your schooling. This must have been a big part of that old PhD thing you got at old Florida.

No PhD. DP. Oh, what?

I'm going

to call

it I'm labeling Ken as a doctor here. I'm going to get No PhD is coming after me. I don't want that kind of pressure.

Yes. Yes. I spent many many hours in in classes learning about it. Hopefully hopefully everybody will at least consider it now, if not outright do it. So go out there and search scouting.

See what's out there. Get a handle on it sooner rather than later. An ounce of prevention is worth the pound to cure. And let's do this again next week.

Oh, we shall do this again next week. The horticultural hijinks shall continue on the Good Growing podcast as we get through the month of April. Oh my gosh, Ken. We're we're halfway through. It's tax day as we record right now.

So, I mean, it's gonna be harvest time any day now. Right? Tomatoes coming out yet? No. Not yet.

And we're getting close.

We are getting close. Oh, yeah. It's gonna be it's gonna be a short spring, it feels like. So yeah. Getting plants set out already.

So Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best and that is listening. Or if you're watching us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing. All set.

All set. Yeah. My stretch is done. Alright.

Yep. Aluminum linoleum. Aluminum linoleum.