Pest Management & Plant Health

If you see western subterranean termites swarming in the spring, from now through June, save the specimens for University of California Urban Integrated Pest Management (IPM) advisor and urban entomologist Andrew Sutherland.

Gophers are well-known and certainly unwelcome pests in landscapes, gardens, lawns, and athletic turf. More correctly called pocket gophers, these rodents mostly remain hidden underground in tunnels and feed on plants from below, sometimes pulling whole plants into their tunnels.

Register now for the Urban & Community IPM webinars! All webinar information and registration links are available on our webinar website. Webinars are the third Thursday of every month from 1:00-2:00pm Pacific time. Webinars are free and open to the public but you must register in advance.

While you are outside gardening or inside doing your spring cleaning, you may have recently found small, round, speckled beetles you've never seen before.

Professor Lynn Kimsey of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, knows her insects and she knows the urban myths associated with them.

From the Weed Science Society of America (WSSA) HEADLINES March 17, 2021 * * * * * * * * * * * WESTMINSTER, Colorado March 17, 2021 Weed control in vegetables, flowers and herbs can be incredibly labor intensive, experts with the Weed Science Society of America (WSSA) say.

Biopesticides contain active ingredients of natural or biological origin that include plant extracts, microorganisms, microbial metabolites, organic molecules, minerals, or other such natural materials that have pesticidal properties.

From the Western Farm Press March 17, 2021 By Lee Allen ********** Brad Hanson gets down and dirty in his line of work as a weed specialist with the University of California, Davis Plant Sciences Department, typically conducting field trials in a 400-mile swath of the Central Valley.

(Editor's Note: Watch the April 3rd celebration of the Life and Legacy of Wittko Franke at https://youtu.be/HHQzvaJB33U.) Nature is more a world of scents than a source of noise.

If you've been following the startling spread of the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti, into California--it's been detected as far north as Shasta County since 2013--then you'll want to read about the innovative research underway by a team of UC Davis scientists led by medical entomologist-geneti...