When a garden is thriving and blooming, problems can occur if harmful pests begin to set up house on and around your plants. Before you go berserk eradicating every creature in sight, you must separate the harmful ones from the beneficial ones. After all, the beneficial ones such as ladybugs will help you control the harmful ones as with the aphids. For this reason, you must perform garden pests identification in the proper manner for superior pest management results.
Harmful Garden Pests
Aphids are sap-sucking, soft-bodied, tiny insects that can deform the buds, flowers and leaves of the plants. In addition, they will stunt the overall growth of the plant. When only a few invade your garden, there may be no need for special measures to control, but an infestation of aphids can destroy all your hard work quickly.
Mealybugs are minute, oval-shaped, soft-bodied insects with a powdery, white wax coating. They invade plants on the underside of the leaves or on the stems, and they resemble small bits of white cotton. When left alone, these insects will cause the leaves to wilt and turn yellow, and eventually the plants will die.
Mites are arachnids and a close relation of spiders. They are so small that they often can go unseen with the naked eye, but they pierce the plant to feed on its moisture. This action causes yellowing or necrotic spots to appear on the plants. Mites also can spread diseases and viruses to plants. All of this damages the health of the plants.
Thrips are tiny black or light tan, slender, winged insects. When they infest a plant, they cause damage through sucking on its moisture or by scraping the leaves, flowers and fruit of the plant. Their actions cause the leaves to turn silvery, splotchy and pale before the leaves die. Infested plants become scarred, twisted and discolored. Thrips will invade many types of plants ranging from flowers to vegetables.
Beneficial Garden Creatures
Bees pollinate all types of plants, which is vital for the success of your garden. Without bees and other pollinators such as butterflies and hummingbirds, you would have to perform this tedious task by hand. Whatever you do to control the harmful pests in your garden, it must not harm these precious pollinators.
Ladybugs and their larvae consume mealybugs, aphids and mites. Attract these helpers by planting dill and coreopsis.
Lacewings not only enjoy aphids and thrips for their meals, but also other harmful pests.
Aphid Midges and their larvae will consume all types of aphids after paralyzing them with their toxic saliva. Cultivate pollen-producing plants to attract this fly.
Braconid wasps kill harmful pests such as aphids and moths by laying their eggs inside these creatures. The larvae then feed on their hosts and once the wasps complete their development the hosts die.
Smart Extermination of the Harmful Pests
You need to be careful that the extermination methods you utilize to control the harmful pests do not harm the beneficial insects. As you can see, you can encourage the beneficial ones to come to your garden area, so they can help you eliminate the harmful ones. There are always times, though, that you need to reach out for professional advice and treatment options for not only unwanted garden pests, but also other unwelcome indoor pests.
When this help is necessary for proper garden pests identification and eradication or a home extermination treatment, please contact our company of JDM Pest Control at 1-416-729-3568, joe@jdmpestcontrol.ca or fill out the contact form on our website. We guarantee superior pest management. In addition, we will provide you with a free assessment and you will receive $25.00 off your first visit.