IPM

This page is dedicated to IPM, which as we all know is short for Integrated Pest Management. I don’t want to regurgitate all the obvious and basic info so I’ll try to stay more specific and give my best management practices for success with pest control. I have categories for each of the important greenhouse pests with my preferred methods of control including cultural, chemical and biological methods. In my greenhouse, the first thing a grower must do is to effectively scout and monitor the populations in the greenhouse. Unless you know what you are trying to control, you cannot be effective with your methods, so you have to find the bugs first. Yellow sticky cards are the most common method of monitoring pest populations in the greenhouse and they are very effective. Growers must know how to identify each of the important insects that may be trapped on sticky cards. Obviously only winged, flying insects will be trapped on a sticky card so not all of our problematic pests can be monitored this way. Identification is pretty easy with some experience and there are many books and reference materials to help a grower with this. A good loop magnifier and pest manual should be enough for any grower but there are some new tools out now such as the IPM Scope from Specturm Technologies. My biggest problem is getting my growers to properly and consistently count and record the insects trapped on their cards. Counts should be done weekly and new card put out after each count. This allows us to have a relatively accurate assessment of the pest populations and now we can select the proper control method. I prefer to graphically track all pest populations on an Excel worksheet so that we can compare data from previous seasons as well as track the trends within certain sections of greenhouse. There are a few pests which we are not able to monitor with sticky cards and for those we must actively search susceptible crops. Knowing where to look for crawling insects such as mites, mealybugs and aphids, is essential. Usually these pests congregate on the growing tips and the undersides of leaves. Once a grower has a good grasp on the pest populations, they can now decide if it’s time to treat and if so, how to treat for the pest. I will put all of my recommended control methods for each pest in their respective category as well as links to useful websites or articles.