TYPES OF PEST CONTROL

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While on transplants, we must not forget the insect most often combated with barriers: the cutworm. Cutworms also get around on wing but generally the grub is already in the ground when we have to deal with it. A collar of tar paper, cardboard, or some similar material that can be formed into a circle about three inches in diameter and a couple of inches tall and pushed into the soil an inch to make a wall around each transplant.

Diatomaceous earth can also be used as a barrier. This is a powder made up of calcified one-celled plants. To soft-bodied insects it is a sea of razor-sharp edges. What insects crawl on the surface of the ground to reach plants? None, actually, but slugs do. Slugs are mollusks, not insects, but gardeners can find little reason to make this distinction. A band of diatomaceous earth around the cabbage and/or lettuce if these are the crops being plagued, or around the whole garden, will keep slugs at bay if they are coming "from away" as we say in Maine. The diatomaceous earth cuts the bodies of slugs and soft-bodied insects that come in contact with it.

Traps

Slugs suit my purpose as an example of how traps can be used. They do most of their work at night when it is damp and cool. On a hot day, they can be found in cool, moist places. If you put some boards down in the garden, you may find lots of slugs under them in the heat of day. They also are attracted to malt. Dishes of beer will attract them ...and they'll drown happily.

Electric insect zappers will attract night-flying moths which lay eggs that turn into hungry worms. A light placed in juxtaposition to a sticky surface is a good combination for attracting and killing night-flying insects. It is preferable to the zapper because you can see the insects you are trapping and identify them. You will likely find that the majority are, at worst, benign.

Yellow cards covered with sticky stuff attract many insects. Sticky red balls hung in apple trees get covered with insects landing on them, also. These can be used as traps to decrease populations but they are more often used to monitor the number of insects present at any given time.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM)

IPM uses the sticky traps just described to time the spraying of pesticides. IPM is a giant step forward for commercial growers who used to spray large quantities of contact poisons as a matter of routine. If you were selling stuff for farmers to spray on their crops, wouldn't you want them to spray lots and spray often? Most, if not all, good farmers use IPM methods now. It has cut the use of pesticides in this country dramatically. If you are a gar dener and you are spraying a contact poison like Sevin at the first sign of an insect, you are the last of a dying breed. Think about it.

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