- Author: Anne Schellman
- Author: Karey Windbiel-Rojas
Now is the time to prepare your garden and landscape for winter. The simple tasks recommended below will help prevent perennial weeds, insect pests, and certain disease pathogens so these problems don't get established and become difficult later.
Weeds
- Manage weeds using nonchemical methods such as cultivation, handweeding, or mowing.
- Prevent weeds using competitive plants, mulches, and hand removal.
- Herbicides (weed killers) are rarely needed in established landscape plantings when nonchemical controls are used regularly.
To learn more about managing weeds, see the UC IPM Pest Note: Weed...
- Author: Karey Windbiel-Rojas
We have received several questions lately from people who've found large, strange looking insects in their garden and landscape. What are these alien-like creatures? Are they good, bad, do they bite?
They are Jerusalem crickets, also sometimes called sand cricket, niña de la tierra (child of the earth), potato bug, and stone cricket.
Jerusalem crickets are relatives of crickets, grasshoppers, and katydids. These large insects can be up to two inches long and have heads that somewhat resemble a human head. Their head and body are amber colored, with dark stripes on the abdomen, long antennae, and no wings. Their thick legs are...
If you plan to camp this summer, remember to wait until you arrive at your destination before you purchase firewood. Why?
If you bring your own firewood to a campground, you could unknowingly spread invasive pests and diseases that can harm local trees. New infestations of tree-killing insects and diseases are often found in campgrounds and parks as a result of campers moving firewood.
Once you arrive at your destination, pests can emerge from the firewood and spread to the trees and forests where you camp. Invasive and hard-to-control pests kill several million native trees every year, causing environmental and economic problems.
Ways You Can Help
- Buy it where you burn it! Purchase firewood...
- Author: Karey Windbiel-Rojas
- Contributor: Andrew Mason Sutherland
You may be seeing long-legged, flying insects in your house lately, bouncing around the walls, ceilings, and corners. Many people call these “mosquito hawks” or “mosquito eaters,” but unfortunately, they are not predators of mosquitoes.
These flying insects are actually adult crane flies and although annoying to find in the home, they are basically harmless and won't help with any mosquito problems.
Many reports claim these adult European crane flies (Tipula paludosa) bite or sting, but this is false. Most adult crane flies, which superficially resemble large mosquitoes with very long legs, eat very little, if at all. Adult crane flies live for only a few weeks, and when they find their...
Spring is a good time to begin monitoring for any lawn insect pests. Pest examples include various root, crown and leaf-feeding caterpillars, grubs like masked chafers, billbugs and chinch bugs.
Although insects can be serious pests of lawns, lawn damage is more frequently due to lack of proper cultural care and/or improper grass species selection for your area. An unhealthy lawn is more easily attacked by insects, weeds and diseases.
Insects are sometimes are blamed for lawn damage when the culprit may actually be disease-causing pathogens, dog urine, or abiotic causes such as leaving an item on the lawn for some time and inappropriate use of garden chemicals such as fertilizers and herbicides.
It's important to...