Pest Management & Plant Health

[From the Fall 2018 issue of UC IPM's Green Bulletin newsletter] The dark rover ant (Brachymyrmex patagonicus) is an invasive species which is increasingly being noticed in Southern California. It is a nuisance species that invades structures as both workers and winged (alate) individuals.

He targets the tsetse fly. Tsetse flies, large biting flies that inhabit much of Africa, feed on the blood of humans and other vertebrates and transmit such parasitic diseases as African trypanosomiasis. In humans, this disease is better known as sleeping sickness.

Advice for the Home Gardener from the Help Desk of the UC Master Gardener Program of Contra Costa County Help Desk Request: While I'm not a new gardener, I'm trying to grow a cold-season vegetable garden this year for the first time. One veggie I've also planted for the first time is Bok Choy.

Controlling weeds can be challenging to landscape professionals or home gardeners since landscapes often include a mix of turfgrass, annual plants, herbaceous perennials, shrubs, and trees.

The katydid, as green as the leaves around it, is feeding on a yellow rose. It is paying no attention to the circling honey bees. The bees want nectar, not an encounter with a critter far bigger than they are. The katydid slowly moves from one devastated blossom to a bud.

Aphids, don't you just hate them? Especially those oleander aphids that suck the very lifeblood out of our milkweed plants that we're struggling to save for monarch butterflies. Just call aphids "The Enemy of the Gardener" or "The Enemy of the Milkweed.

Last winter, many growers and PCAs contacted me because they were having trouble or were largely unable to control Italian ryegrass (Lolium perenne ssp. multiflorum) in their cereal fields.

Potted strawberry plants color-coded for different treatments. Photo by Surendra Dara Charcoal rot, caused by Macrophomina phaseolina, is one of the important fungal diseases of strawberry in California.

While you're peeling and segmenting your orange at breakfast or spooning orange honey on your toast, you're probably not thinking about the Asian citrus psyllid.

Entomologist and biocontrol specialist Mark Hoddle, director of the Center for Invasive Species Research, University of California, Riverside, will speak on Protecting California Agriculture from Invasive Pests: Biocontrol of Asian Citrus Psyllid in Urban Southern California, at the UC Department of...