- Author: Lauren Fordyce
In February we recognize Valentine's Day, President's Day, and Black History Month, but did you know it is also IPM month?! Join us in celebrating by learning more about integrated pest management (IPM), how you can use it in your everyday life, and the pest management resources and information offered by UC IPM.
What is IPM?
Integrated pest management (IPM) is a more sustainable, environmentally friendly method for managing pests like insects, diseases, weeds, and unwanted wildlife. IPM can be used by anyone: homeowners, tenants, farmers, gardeners, janitors, groundskeepers, professional landscapers and pest control operators, and more.
IPM focuses on the long-term management of pests through prevention and monitoring. This reduces pests reaching damaging levels and becoming difficult to control or requiring pesticide use. One way pests can be prevented outdoors is by providing plants with proper care (water, sunlight, and nutrients). You can prevent pests from coming indoors by sealing gaps around windows and doors. Monitor for pests using tools like sticky traps, or visual inspection.
Once a pest becomes a problem, it must be correctly identified so the correct management solution can be chosen. Many pests can be managed without the use of pesticides. In IPM, we often choose nonchemical solutions first:
- Biological control: the use of natural enemies—predators, parasites, pathogens, and competitors—to controlpests and their damage. Some examples of natural enemies include ladybeetles, lacewings, and spiders.
- Cultural control: practices that limit pests from establishing, reproducing, and living where they're not wanted. These practices can include increased cleanliness, proper storage of food, good plant care, and well-maintained landscape irrigation systems.
- Mechanical or physical control: kill a pest directly, block pests out, or make the environment unsuitable for them. Examples include traps for rodents, mulches for weed management, and flyswatters for flying insects.
Pesticides can still be an important part of IPM, but they should be used in combination with nonchemical solutions for long-term management. Pesticides alone will not solve a pest problem or prevent pests from becoming a problem again later. When pesticides are needed, choose products that are less toxic. Less toxic pesticides are those that pose fewer risks to people, pets, the environment, and natural enemies like ladybeetles. Learn more about less toxic pesticides at https://ipm.ucanr.edu/QT/lesstoxicinsecticidescard.html.
Whether you are trying to control cockroaches in an apartment, weeds in the garden, or diseases on landscape plants, UC IPM has the tools and resources to help you using an IPM approach.
To learn more about integrated pest management, visit https://ipm.ucanr.edu/what-is-ipm/ or view our resources for managing specific home, garden, and landscape pests using IPM at https://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/menu.homegarden.html.
/h2>- Author: Saoimanu Sope
The first time Chris Wong ever laid eyes on Romanesco broccoli was while he was selling it at a farmers market in Davis. Although the broccoli was marketed as locally sourced and organically grown, Wong remembers reading the label on the produce box: Holtville, California – 15 minutes from Wong's hometown, located more than 600 miles south of Davis.
Wong, CalFresh Healthy Living, UC Cooperative Extension community education supervisor for Imperial County, grew up in the community he now serves. In his role, he identifies opportunities to improve community health whether it be increasing access to healthy food, making neighborhoods more conducive for exercise, or simply educating the public.
But it was his college experience at UC Davis that catapulted his career focused on food systems and community health. Because he lived in UC Davis' Student Co-op Housing, he found himself surrounded by peers studying food science or agriculture.
“I was heavily influenced by the things they spoke about,” he said, adding that he was inspired to get involved with the local farmers market in Davis. “I started working at a farmers market, selling local, organic produce at very high prices to very privileged people in Davis, including students.”
He was troubled that the produce was transported from Imperial County – from towns like Brawley and Holtville, where Wong grew up – and yet he had never seen some of the products he was selling in Davis.
After spending a few years going back and forth between Davis and his hometown, Wong moved back home to Calexico fulltime in 2015. Eager to locate the nearest farmers market after his experience in Davis, he learned that the nearest one was in a city north of Calexico.
A grant provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture helped a Calexico based non-profit organization establish a farmers market in a neighboring community of El Centro, identified as a food desert, yet the farmers market was in a different city.
“It wasn't the same as the one in Davis. They didn't even have produce, just food and craft vendors,” he said. Wong felt motivated to make a change.
“I asked the coordinators of that farmers market if I could volunteer with them. I asked them about the process of establishing a farmers market. Then I started sending Facebook messages to city council members and other community leaders and was able to get a meeting with them,” Wong said.
A fresh start for his hometown
On Oct. 6, 2013, Wong and a few others launched the first-ever farmer's market in Calexico. Wong described opening day as “almost a failure” because of the lack of available produce. “It was really tough; we had a lot of build up for it. We had a distributor who came to provide produce, but it took a while before we got produce vendors to the site,” he said.
Even though Wong's hometown is also home to 500,000 acres of farmland, many of the farms in the Imperial Valley are commercial or industrial farms. This means that the crops have already been contracted to end up at stores like Costco before they're even planted.
“We even got the Romanesco broccoli to be sold in Calexico,” said Wong.
For six years, Calexico had a farmers market that community members benefitted from. When he wasn't securing vendors, Wong was attending community alliance meetings to promote the market and its effort to bring healthy, fresh options to the kitchen table. In 2019, the market shut down after the City of Calexico's Community Services Department Director retired and the department restructured.
Determined to succeed
During his first year at UC Davis, Wong, an anthropology major at the time, struggled as a student and felt ill-prepared to manage the intense coursework that lay ahead. “I just couldn't get the right grades or write good papers,” he said. Before the spring semester of his first year concluded, Wong was academically dismissed from UC Davis.
“There's a joke in my hometown that people say to students who go off to college,” said Wong. “Before you leave, people will say ‘see you next year' because a lot of us don't finish college and return home.”
Returning home was never an option for Wong. He was determined to stay the course, noting that he couldn't return home with student debt and no degree. To get himself back on track, Wong took summer courses at UC Davis and enrolled in remedial English classes at Sacramento City College. In total, he spent an entire school year and two summers making up for his academic shortcomings.
Wong's efforts at Sacramento City College paid off. He was able to reenroll at UC Davis and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Spanish Literature with a minor in Latin American Hemispheric Studies.
Remembering his roots
There's no doubting that the California/Mexican border holds a special place in Wong's heart. His father, of Chinese descent, and his mother met in Mexicali, where Wong's mother is from, and got married against their parents' will.
“They got married in secret and had me in secret because my Chinese grandmother did not approve of the relationship,” said Wong, describing her as “traditional.”
Growing up, Wong remained connected to his Mexican heritage but not so much his Chinese culture. Wong, along with his three younger siblings, are all fluent in Spanish but if you speak to him in Cantonese, like his paternal grandmother does, he'd only be able to make out a few words and phrases.
Wong's father grew up speaking Chinese in his home in Mexicali. When he would attend school in Calexico, however, most students spoke Spanish. The constant shift in language confused Wong's father, causing him to flunk the third grade. To ensure his children didn't experience the same challenges, Wong's father purposefully withheld from teaching Wong or his siblings Cantonese.
Wong's ability to speak Spanish, the language of the community he serves, has empowered him to connect with residents on a deeper level. Of the many things that Wong has accomplished, he is most proud to be giving back to the community that raised him. In 2017, he joined UC ANR as a UC Cooperative Extension community education specialist for Imperial County before becoming a community education supervisor in 2022.
Despite the setbacks that could have easily derailed Wong, he remains steadfast and is always looking for ways to improve his community's health. “I'm eternally grateful for the opportunity to serve my home community as a representative of the UC,” Wong said. “Visiting my old classrooms and teachers to provide their current students with quality educational experiences I may not have had growing up, brings me the utmost joy.”
- Author: Dr. Anthony Fulford
What is subsoil?
There are several layers (also known as “horizons” to soil scientists) that can be found when we dig deeper and deeper down into the soil. We can imagine all the individual layers of a soil stacked one on top of the other like a layer cake, this is called the soil profile. The surface soil is the uppermost layer of the soil profile, and the one we are most familiar with, because this is where most of the action takes place. Soil mixing with tillage, compost and fertilizer application, irrigation, plant root growth, and animal activity (including microbes) are mainly concentrated within the soil's surface layer. Additionally, decomposition of plant and leaf litter occurs most rapidly in the surface soil, this eventually leads to the formation of new soil organic matter. In comparison, the subsurface soil, or subsoil, is composed of one or more soil layers that lie below the influence of surface soil activities. There is not a consistent depth at which every surface soil layer changes into the subsoil layer(s), rather the subsoil occurs at a different depth from place to place depending on numerous factors, including some of the factors mentioned previously. This is the reason why it is difficult to determine where the subsoil layer begins in the soil profile.
What does subsoil contain?
What does subsoil look like?
What is subsoil used for?
In general, the subsoil is a less suitable medium for plant growth compared to surface soil because of some of the factors mentioned previously. There are properties of subsoil however that make it suitable for other uses such as a source of “fill soil” for “cut-and-fill” construction operations, as a source of clay for building materials, and as an absorption layer for on-site wastewater disposal.
What can home gardeners do to keep their subsoil in great shape year after year?
What is the substratum layer of soil? Does that layer affect gardening at all, and if so how?
What is the bedrock layer? Does that layer affect gardening at all, and if so how?
Bedrock is the bottom layer of the soil profile layer cake. The bedrock layer consists of solid rock that has not yet been exposed to the chemical, physical, and biological processes of the surface soil and subsoil. In some places, bedrock is the foundation from which the overlying soil layers developed, while in other places, the bedrock layer may have become “buried” by windblown sand or sediment. Bedrock does not directly influence plant growth, but it can determine the type of clay minerals found in different layers of the soil profile.
Dr. Anthony Fulford is the Area Nutrient Management and Soil Quality Advisor for Stanislaus, Merced, and San Joaquin Counties.
/h3>/h3>/h3>/h3>/h3>/h3>/h3>- Author: Jason Alvarez, UC Merced, University News
Latinos suffer from some of the highest obesity rates in the nation. Health officials have tried to intervene with messaging that encourages healthy eating and healthy behavior, but these campaigns have met with little success.
Now a new study Opens a New Window. from UC Merced public health Opens a New Window. Professor Susana Ramirez suggests that efforts might be more successful if strategies encouraged Latinos to “decolonize their diet.”
Obesity risk among Latinos reflects a broader trend that public health experts have termed the “dietary acculturation paradox.”
“The paradox comes from epidemiological findings over the past 50 years that show that increased acculturation into mainstream U.S. culture is bad for your health,” Ramirez said. “If you look at immigrants born and raised in other countries who came to the U.S. as adults, they tend to be healthier than their American children.”
According to Ramirez, much of the problem stems from children of immigrants adopting American diets. These diets tend to be highly processed and high in unhealthy ingredients like fat, sodium and sugar. They're also low in healthy ingredients like fiber, complex carbohydrates and fresh fruits and vegetables.
This remains true despite gains in income and education, which are generally associated with better health outcomes. But Ramirez's new study provides insight into why the acculturation paradox affects Latinos.
Ramirez and her collaborators surveyed young, bicultural women — ages 18-29; of Mexican descent; living in the Central Valley; fluent in English — about diet and cultural values.
“We started talking to this audience to learn about the factors that influence their decision-making around diet,” Ramirez said. “We also wanted to know what features of health messages are persuasive to this particular audience.”
“Thinking of themselves as Mexican is a source of pride for these second- and third-generation women,” Ramirez said.
Participants also reported a desire to eat healthy. They listed portion control, balanced meals, and fruits and vegetables as part of a healthy diet; fried foods and foods high in fat and sugar were seen as unhealthy. They were also able to identify specific consequences of unhealthy eating, including obesity and diabetes.
The findings suggested that the prevailing wisdom about healthy diets had reached the group, but those messages weren't having the intended effect.
“Everybody was able to tell us what eating healthy was,” Ramirez said. “But we found that participants were saying ‘when I'm with my Mexican family and I'm expressing my Mexican culture, that is being unhealthy.' Culture is at odds with health.”
Ramirez had identified a second paradox, one that pitted kitchen against culture. Though respondents viewed traditional Mexican cooking as essential to maintaining their ethnic identity, most described Mexican food as inherently unhealthy and incompatible with a healthy diet.
“Healthy-eating promoters often encourage traditional food. But there's a disconnect there,” Ramirez said. “If you're going to tell Latinos to eat their traditional foods, that's priming them to think of unhealthy things. That can cause confusion.”
The solution, according to Ramirez, is a new approach to health communication — an approach that builds on the importance of Latino culture and frames the issue in ways that are relevant to the community.
“Healthy living messages often don't take culture into account,” Ramirez said. “For me, that suggests a pretty radical approach to health communication, an approach that's empowerment based.
“Talk about food and nutrition as rights they can advocate for in their community. Talk about how Latino populations are disproportionately targeted in marketing for junk food and fast food in their communities. It's an approach that empowers young Latinas to decolonize their diet."
Source: Published originally on UC Merced, University news, Kitchen and Culture Clash When Promoting Healthy Eating to Latinos, by Jason Alvarez, March 22nd, 2018.
Register for the U.S. EPA Webinar: It Takes an Integrated Pest Management Village - IPM for a Healthier Home and Community
Date: Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Time: 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. ET (11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PT), Followed by a live Q&A session
This webinar will prepare you to—
- Identify various types of pests in your home environment and determine the best control tactics.
- Understand the importance of utilizing integrated pest management practices indoors and outdoors.
- Learn how to assess your home or community facility and identify pest vulnerable areas.
- Effectively prevent pests by taking proactive steps and determine when its necessary to involve contract services to alleviate your pest issues.
Learn the basics of IPM and gain and understanding of the many benefits this smart, sensible, and sustainable approach to pest control provides. We'll discuss the key steps for developing an IPM-based plan to combat pest in and around your home. Your participation will empower you with the information needed to realize the benefits IPM can bring to your home and community.
Featured speakers:
• Dion Lerman, MPH, Associate Certified Entomologist / Healthy Homes Specialist, Pennsylvania Integrated Pest Management Program
• Thomas Green, Ph.D., CCA, TSP, President, IPM Institute of North America Inc.
U.S. EPA School IPM webpage: https://www.epa.gov/managing-pests-schools