- (Focus Area) Yard & Garden
Just a few more weeks of summer remain! As the weather begins to shift, you may need to adjust your landscaping practices to prevent and monitor for fall pests. The UC IPM Seasonal Landscape IPM Checklist is a monthly guide to help you avoid common pests of landscape plants.
Here are some general tips for the month of September to prevent pests and their damage in the garden and landscape. Visit the checklist online to see more pest management to-dos for your region.
- Monitor citrus plants for signs of pests such as
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
So here's this praying mantis, a male Mantis religiosa, tucked beneath a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, in a Vacaville garden.
He's as still as a stone, and you know how still stones are.
Along comes a honey bee, Apis mellifera. She's packing a load of orange pollen. She lands on the blossom and begins foraging.
She does not see the mantis, commonly known as "the European mantis."
The mantis sees her.
What happened?
Well, Ms. Bee continued to forage, oblivious to the predator and the pending danger, and then buzzed away.
Mr. Mantis remained as still as a stone.
And then, he, too, took flight...in the opposite...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Holiday? What holiday?
It's Labor Day, but honey bees aren't relaxing. They're out in force collecting nectar, pollen, water and propolis.
Ever seen them weighted down with huge pollen loads?
They seem to have "Herculean strength," don't you think? That's what Norman "Norm" Gary, emeritus professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, writes in his book,
- Author: James Farr
- Author: Linda Carloni
When the temperature starts to dip from the high 90s, and you are still picking ripe tomatoes and zucchini nearly every day, fall and winter gardens don't immediately come to mind. Although it may not feel like it, this is the time to be thinking ahead and planning for the next seasons.
We are wonderfully fortunate in the Bay Area that we live in a Mediterranean climate where we can grow vegetables all year round. Mediterranean climates make up only approximately three percent of the landmass on Earth, yet are among the best agricultural areas on Earth. The temperatures are warm in the inland areas but close enough to the ocean to cool down at...
- Author: Bonita Malone, UC Master Gardener of Butte County
Once again, we are experiencing a summer of devastating fires, with repercussions that will last decades or even longer. One of the lesser-known ways in which wildfires wreak havoc is the fact that they create ideal conditions for a particular pest, Melanophila acuminata, the black fire beetle. Also known as fire chasers or fire bugs, these beetles are often the very first to arrive at the scene of a conflagration. By using pheromones, chemical signals, and auditory cues, and monitoring temperature and humidity, Melanophila acuminata will fly over eighty miles to a freshly burned forest. Once there, they meet up, mate, and lay eggs, thriving in places most living creatures avoid.
These wood-boring shiny black beetles are 7-11 mm...