UC IPM has a brand new resource called the Seasonal Landscape IPM Checklist (or SLIC). The checklist is a regional decision-making tool designed to help guide landscape professionals and home gardeners through a yearly list of activities to prevent, monitor, or manage landscape plant pest problems throughout the year.
The Seasonal Landscape IPM Checklist can be accessed on UC IPM's Home, garden, turf and landscape pests web page under “More information,” and can also be found under the...
It's not uncommon to see opossums running through your backyard or neighborhood. Opossums are small, house cat-sized animals that have coarse, grayish fur, a pointed face and round, hairless ears and a long, hairless tail. Their feet resemble small hands with five widely spread fingers.
Opossums may visit vegetable gardens, compost piles, garbage cans, or food dishes intended for dogs or cats. They also eat fresh meat and carrion and often feed on road kills.
In urban and suburban areas, opossum can become a nuisance as they often get into fights with dogs and cats and can inflict serious injury. Opossums carry several diseases such as tuberculosis, toxoplasmosis, trichomoniasis and Chagas disease. They may also have...
Fall is the best time to protect your backyard fruit and nut trees from winter and spring pests. By implementing good sanitation practices now, you can help eliminate future disease, vertebrate, and insect pests.
Did you know that fruits and nuts left on the ground and hanging in trees (called “mummies”) are an open invitation to pests? As the weather begins to turn cold, pests look for a safe place to overwinter and/or to lay eggs, and mummies are an ideal shelter for them. Fungi and bacteria present in mummies also remain in dormant and active states.
Keep your fruit trees healthy by removing and disposing of all mummies in and around trees, shrubs and vines.
Other practices to reduce pest problems...
- Author: Andrew Mason Sutherland
[From the July 2015 issue of the UC IPM Retail IPM Newsletter]
Insect pests, though actually quite rare in well-managed lawns and turf, can sometimes jeopardize a flawless appearance, potentially sending people running to their local nursery or garden center for help.
The recently revised UC IPM Pest Note: Lawn Insects can prepare you with answers to keep lawns pest-free and BBQ ready this summer. This resource contains a wealth of information about lawn insect...
/span>- Author: Karey Windbiel-Rojas
As you plan the last few camping trips of the summer, remember: buy firewood when you get to your destination. Don't move firewood! Buy it where you burn it.
Why?
Simply, we don't want wood-boring pests and diseases to be moved from one area in the state to another area where they don't exist. Buy wood where you intend to burn it and don't bring any wood home with you upon your return.
Several beetles that bore into trees such as the gold-spotted oak borer, polyphagus shothole borer, walnut twig beetle, and others may be present in the wood you gather or buy in your area. If you buy or gather wood and then take it with you to another...