Learn about pests and the options for controlling them safely. Eliminate attractants by improving sanitation; organizing or discarding clutter; and closing off places where pests breed, hide, or live.

Mechanical and physical controls kill or block a pest or change their environment so they are unsuitable for living. Examples include traps, fences, and steam sterilization. Visit https://armispestmanagement.com/ to learn more.

Prevention is the first step in pest management and is often the most difficult to accomplish. It involves preventing pests from becoming established or increasing in numbers at your site. This can be done through a variety of methods, including cultural, biological, mechanical, and chemical controls. Natural controls, such as weather and topography, help limit the number of pests by limiting their habitats. Biological controls, such as predators, parasites, and pathogens, can be used to reduce the size of pest populations by injuring or killing them. Biological control methods can be used for both insects and plants. Examples include introducing beneficial organisms, such as lacewing larvae or lady beetle adults, into cropland; planting weeds that are host for beneficial insects, such as queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota) or London rocket (Sisymbrium iriopeum); and implementing field sanitation practices, such as mowing, hoeing, or pulling weeds before they seed, to prevent them from becoming a food source for unwanted pests.

Monitoring is the key to reducing pest risks because it allows you to keep an eye on pest numbers, damage, and the environment in which they occur. This information helps you determine whether the pests can be tolerated or whether control is necessary. It also helps you select the most effective control measures and to implement them at the right time. Monitoring can be conducted regularly or as needed in fields, landscapes, gardens, forests, and buildings or other indoor areas.

Pest identification is a crucial part of monitoring, because it helps you decide whether a pest can be controlled through natural or human means. You can use the information about the pest, its biology and life cycle, and environmental factors to evaluate how serious the problem is. Monitoring also provides useful data to help you establish a system for identifying and managing pests at your location, such as setting up monitoring stations or establishing baseline conditions for the area.

Eradication is rarely a goal in outdoor pest situations, except when the pest is damaging or threatens to destroy the economic potential of an area. In indoor environments, eradication is more common. It is more difficult to achieve, however, because pests can survive in a variety of conditions, and are better equipped to hide from detection.

Suppression

Suppression methods slow down or stop pest activity and population growth to reduce damage. They are used as soon as the signs of pests indicate that an infestation is imminent and before control measures become more expensive than the damage they cause. Suppression tactics include preventive, biological, cultural and physical/mechanical controls.

Preventive methods keep the pest from becoming a problem in the first place. This includes using pest-free seeds and transplants, irrigation scheduling to avoid conditions conducive to disease development, cleaning tillage and harvesting equipment between fields or operations, field sanitation procedures, and avoiding alternate hosts for insect pests and weeds.

Biological controls use natural enemies of the pest to injure or consume it. Examples are nematodes that kill harmful soil grubs, mite predators in orchards, and parasitoids that attack crop diseases such as the greenhouse whitefly. Releasing these natural enemies (if legal and approved) or conserving them (if possible) can greatly limit pest populations.

Cultural practices encourage natural enemies and other factors that reduce pest damage, such as intercropping crops to make it more difficult for a pest to find a host plant, planting trap crops to attract and later treat with selective application of pesticides, and changing cultivation techniques to limit crop debris and water availability. Physical and mechanical controls kill a pest directly or block them from entering a field or building, such as traps for rodents, screens, fences, and barriers. Radiation and electricity may also be used to alter the environment to kill or keep away some pests.

Eradication is a last resort when other management strategies have failed to keep pest numbers below an economically acceptable threshold. It is important to follow up after corrective actions are taken to assess the success or failure of the suppression tactic, so that monitoring will guide future prevention and avoidance activities. The purpose of all pest control is to manage the pest population below a level that causes unacceptable damage. The choice of tactics depends on pest biology and behavior, the amount of harm caused, tolerance for injury, economics, and environmental impacts.

Detection

The pest control goal of eradication is rarely achieved in outdoor pest situations. Usually the objective is prevention and suppression. In some situations, however, eradication is attempted when a certain pest presents a serious threat to esthetic, health or economic values or where a zero tolerance policy exists (such as in operating rooms and other sterile areas of health care facilities).

The ability to detect the presence of a pest is critical to any pest management program. Detection can be done by trapping or scouting. Sometimes a pest can be detected by simply looking at the plant or by observing its damage.

Identifying pests and understanding what factors influence their presence and abundance are important to preventive pest management strategies. Accurate identification also helps you determine whether or not a particular pest is actually harmful, and how often monitoring should be done.

Pest populations are controlled naturally by weather, natural enemies, and other environmental conditions that may help or hinder your efforts at prevention. In addition, certain chemicals can be used to repel or disrupt pests. Some plants are more resistant to pests than others, and can be selected to enhance your garden’s beauty or food production.

Many pests are very predictable if you know their life cycle and the factors that influence their presence in your area. This allows you to predict when the pest will reach nuisance or harming levels and take action.

Certain pheromones can be used to lure insects into traps so that their numbers can be estimated. Some pheromones are also used to interrupt the mating process in order to reduce pest numbers.

It is essential to monitor your plants for pests, and make adjustments to your growing practices when needed, in order to keep the number of pests below a threshold that you have established for unacceptable injury or damage. Generally, the more valuable the plants are and the less time they are left unattended, the more frequent the monitoring should be.

Treatment

Once a pest infestation has been detected, the next step is to consider control options. It is important to remember that controlling a pest is not about “eradicating” it, but reducing the number of pests to an acceptable level. Control tactics include prevention, suppression, and if necessary, eradication.

Prevention involves taking actions to prevent a pest from becoming a problem in the first place. Monitoring and scouting help with this, as does identifying pests accurately and understanding their life cycles and damage potential. It is also critical to evaluate the environmental conditions that fostered the pest infestation – soil health, temperature, moisture levels, etc.

Suppression refers to reducing pest numbers to below an economic or aesthetic injury threshold. Often, this is achieved through monitoring and scouting, as well as choosing plants that are more resistant to pests (hardy landscape varieties, for example) or by planting “trap” crops (such as soybeans, zinnias, white roses, radishes, or corn) that attract specific insect pests and then treating them with insecticide.

In some situations, particularly those involving invasive, foreign species that pose a threat to human safety or the viability of natural ecosystems, eradication may be an appropriate goal. For example, a zero tolerance level for bacteria in operating rooms and other sterile areas of medical facilities would necessitate regular cleaning and disinfecting, and sometimes eradication, to ensure that no contaminants are introduced.

Once an optimum balance between pests and their natural enemies has been established, cultural methods can be used to maintain this balance. This includes preparing soil, selecting plant varieties that are well-adapted to site conditions and not attractive to pests, interplanting, rotating crops, removing weeds before they develop into a nuisance, and applying mulches and other conservation practices to reduce nutrient availability to undesirable plants. When these techniques are not effective, or if the pest is a plant disease, biological or chemical controls may be considered. Chemical treatments can include herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, but should always be a last resort after all other options have been exhausted. These chemicals should be chosen with great care, following the labels instructions including those for minimizing risks to people, pets, wildlife, and other plants that share the environment with the intended crop or garden.