When it comes to managing weeds and insects in your garden or in a local area, you can’t just use one type of tool. One control practice doesn’t deal with every pest
problem that you’ll see, and an integrated pest management (IPM) approach is the best.
This means you’ll use cultural, chemical, biological, physical, and mechanical tools. You may not use every single one of them at the same time, but you will combine them for your needs to help speed up the weed and insect control situation.
What Are IPM Programs?
There are multiple IPM programs out there, and they will use all the most up to date information about the life cycles of insects and diseases. This isn’t just about how the colonies grow, but also about how they interact with the environment and what happens to the host plant.
This helps to form the most economical method of insect and weed control. After all, this is an expensive option and for some, allowing the pests to live is the cheapest option for their needs.
What Is the Goal of an IPM?
Not all pests need to be removed. The main goal of an integrated pest management program isn’t to eradicate everything. There are some pests that are actually useful for some environments, and they need to be allowed to thrive. In fact, you may need some pests to help prevent other, more serious problems.
The aim of the programs is to reduce the economical damage. It’s important to keep the colonies under control to help the vegetation to thrive.
Steps to Approach an IPM
How do you go about creating an IPM? This is done in four steps:
• Set the action thresholds
• Monitor and identify all pests
• Prevent the growth
• Control the levels
The first thing you’re going to do is decide what you want to achieve with your pest management system. Which pests are the problem? This is the monitoring and identifying process. You need to look at how the pests are working together. Which ones are preventing more serious problems?
While you want to keep some pests, you don’t want them getting out of control. So, you need to prevent the growth of them with the tools, and then you can control the levels. This requires consistency in monitoring the insect and weed problem.
