If you’re curious about what is the best outdoor pest control, this technique called Integrated Pest Management (IPM) can satisfy your curiosity about it. It employs biological and cultural measures to carry out pest control.
This practice involves cost-effective and environmentally sound methods of eliminating insects and pests in your garden. It encourages the healthy growth of a crop while getting rid of techniques that can disrupt our agro-ecosystems.
Instead of exterminating the pests you see, anyone should consider using IPM because with IPM, you’ll determine the environmental factors that give the pests the ability to thrive. Once you identify the elements, you can start creating conditions detrimental to the pests.
IPM is a response to increased pesticide use. Part of its goal is to grow robust crops while minimizing pesticides to reduce the risks posed by pesticides to human lives.
How Can IPM Programs Work?
A viable way to manage pests is by utilizing methods that can work together. Below are the procedures the IPM will implement to help you get rid of outdoor pests.
Setting thresholds
Before an outdoor pest control takes place, IPM sets up an action threshold indicating the appropriate pest control methods to be carried out — considering an outdoor site’s pest population and environmental condition.
Monitoring and identifying pests
Monitoring involves searching your yard to recognize which pests are existent, how many there are, and the intensity of damage they’ve caused. The key is to correctly identify the existing pests to determine the best management strategy.
IPM programs monitor pests and identify them precisely to make proper pest control decisions. Monitoring and identification lower the tendency to use pesticides when they’re not needed.
Prevention
As the first line of control, IPM programs work to prevent the crops from becoming a threat to pests. When it comes to crops, this involves using cultural methods like crop rotation, growing crops that can survive pest attacks, and planting disease-resistant plants.
Control
If the monitoring stage indicates that pest control is required and preventive practices are no longer effective, IPM programs will evaluate the safe methods for effectiveness and risk.
IPM chooses less-risky pest control methods first. These methods include using chemicals that disrupt pest mating or mechanical control like trapping or weeding.
4 Tactics Of IPM
For the IPM, least-precarious methods are prioritized first before the toxic ones. Explained hereunder are the tactics devised by IPM.
1. Cultural methods
You can hamper pest problems by giving pests harsh conditions to live. You can do this by planting crops adapted to growing conditions and giving them enough nutritional needs and water.
Plant only at appropriate times, robust crops withstand diseases, and are less likely to succumb to insects.
2. Physical methods
Physical methods stop the pests from accessing your outdoor area. It includes weed management and soil sterilization, and the most common is using barriers such as screens to keep the insects and pests out.
3. Biological methods
Biological methods incorporate the use of parasites, predators, pathogens in a targeted way to control pest populations.
4. Chemical methods
Chemical control deals with the use of pesticides in pest control. Pesticides are only used in IPM when essential and combined with other long-term control methods.
Be wise in choosing pesticides; select only those pesticides which are harmless to people, the environment, and non-target organisms. It would help if you’re picky in choosing pesticides and ensuring that it’s the safest for air, soil, and water.
Are you curious about what pest control companies use? You may visit this article which answers the question, what do pest control companies use.
Other Outdoor Pest Control Practices
Whether you’re setting up a backyard party for your family or an al fresco dinner for your high school friends, you certainly hate bugs around. Here are other pest control practices to extinguish pests in your outdoor space.
Spray from time to time
It is highly recommended to use preventative pest control spray at least once every three months and at the onset of spring. Spraying at the beginning of spring helps eradicate nests and colonies before pests reproduce.
When the weather is warm, especially in the summertime, increase the regularity of spraying at least once a month.
Treat ants differently
When it comes to ants, refrain from spraying as ants warn other ants to move away and look for food away from the area you sprayed. Instead of using ant killer sprays, use non-repellent baits to share the poison with other ants within their colony.
Don’t disturb bees and wasps when they’re awake
When eliminating bees and wasps, it is advisable to spray late at night to reduce the risk of getting stung. Beware not to shake the nest, and ensure that the entrances and areas surrounding it are covered.
Conclusion
If you want to know what is the best outdoor pest control, the best pest control technique is IPM, which means Integrated Pest Management. IPM integrates various pest control methods, from manual pest removal to habitat manipulation.
Want to know how often you should do pest control? You can check this article, giving a detailed answer as to how often should pest control be done.