Pest Management & Plant Health

A winter pollinator garden does not buzz with bees; it crawls with earwigs, ants, roly-polys, and other insects. Turn over a rock, a pot, or a garden sculpture and there they are. Well, there one was. An earwig looked up as we lifted a garden sculpture.

If you have peach or nectarine trees that typically have distorted or reddened leaves in spring, they may be affected by peach leaf curl. Peach leaf curl is a fungal disease caused by a fungus that only affects peach and nectarine trees.

When we first moved to the Owens Valley 12 years ago we inherited a well-stocked garden, one feature of which was a border of raspberries. Sadly, I forgot to ask the previous homeowner which variety they were.

You could say that entomologist Megan Meuti of The Ohio State University (OSU) messes with mosquitoes' circadian clocks. She's hoping she can trick Culex pipiens, the Northern house mosquito, into not biting us.

While most Californians are wholeheartedly embracing the wet start to winter, one group is welcoming the rain more warily (and wearily) lettuce growers in the Salinas Valley.

We all encounter pests in our homes, gardens, and landscapes, but which ones are most popular in California? While we can't say for certain, website traffic to UC IPM's Pest Notes gives us a glimpse of popular pests. Here are the top ten most frequently viewed publications in 2021.

Weedy rice was found in California on a large scale in 2016, over 8 counties, after having been only found in a few fields in one county prior to 2008. In 2020, University of California Cooperative Extension conducted a comprehensive survey.

Every year, invasive pests cause billions of dollars of damage to California agricultural systems and natural areas. These pests can be weeds, plant pathogens, insects, vertebrates, shellfish and other aquatic species.

If you have a peach or nectarine tree in your landscape, most of the leaves have probably dropped. This is a great reminder to gardeners that it's time to spray for peach leaf curl. Right now, the fungus that causes leaf curl is present on your trees.

Mosquito expert Sylvia Fischer of the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, will target the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, when she presents a UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's virtual seminar on Wednesday, Jan. 12.