Pests are organisms (such as insects, fungi, nematodes, weeds, and vertebrate animals) that damage or devalue crops, plants, buildings, homes, or yards. Pest control involves eliminating or limiting the presence of such organisms.
Cultural practices, barriers, traps, soil solarization, and other physical or mechanical methods can all be used to control pests. Contact Solutions Pest Control now!
Prevention techniques are the best way to safeguard your home or business against pest infestation. They focus on preventing pests from entering your property by blocking their access to the necessary resources. This is a more cost-effective approach to pest control and also more environmentally friendly. It involves regular inspections and implementing specific enhancements to block common entry points for pests, providing a robust barrier against invasion.
Physical prevention involves a variety of techniques, including caulking, weather stripping, and sealing cracks to prevent pests from finding their way inside. It also involves regularly cleaning your living spaces and disposing of garbage properly to eliminate food sources and attractants for pests. Other structural measures include removing tree and shrub limbs that touch the building to prevent rodents and other pests from easily jumping over the fence to enter your house.
Structural maintenance also includes fixing leaky pipes, eliminating standing water, and using dehumidifiers to reduce moisture in attics, crawl spaces, and basements that are conducive to pest breeding. In addition, you should keep wood piles and debris away from your home to deter termites and other pests that thrive in humid environments.
Biological pest control uses predators and other organisms to eliminate infestations, reducing the need for chemicals that can be harmful to humans and pets. This method is best used for small pest invasions and can take some time to be effective.
Chemical pest control involves the use of a variety of products to destroy and repel pests, including sprays, traps, and baits. These products should be carefully selected, ensuring that they are formulated to target the pests you are trying to eliminate. They should be used in conjunction with other methods and out of reach of children and pets.
When choosing a pest control company, you should always choose an established and trusted company that is licensed and insured. They should send a representative to perform an initial assessment of your property and home. This person should look under, around, and behind every area where pests might hide. They should also provide a detailed report of their findings and recommendations for pest control.
Suppression
Once a pest infestation has reached a level that is unacceptable, it must be controlled. Suppression techniques reduce the number of pests to below a threshold where they will no longer cause harm. Control measures include trapping, poisons, and physical or chemical spraying. Ideally, the best suppression techniques combine elements of prevention and eradication.
The first step in any pest control program is to remove damaged plants and scout the growing area for signs of pests. Scouting involves regularly searching for and identifying pests, their numbers, and the damage they are causing. This allows the grower to identify problems before they become out of hand.
Some pests are migratory and may require seasonal or intermittent control, while others are persistent and must be controlled continuously. Environmental conditions and the availability of food, shelter, and water influence pest populations. Plowing, crop rotation, cleaning greenhouse and tillage equipment, managing irrigation schedules, and the use of mulches can deprive pests of their food or habitat or prevent movement between areas.
Biological controls, such as conserving natural enemies or introducing new ones to the area, can help keep pest numbers low. Examples of biological controls include nematodes that kill harmful soil grubs, a wasp that parasitizes greenhouse whitefly, and viruses that infect certain insect pests.
Another form of biological control is using natural pest hormones, such as pheromones, to manipulate pest behavior. Several plant and animal organisms can produce these substances, and they can be used to create sterile insects or to block an insect’s normal maturation process.
Chemical pest control methods, such as fumigants and sprays, are used to target specific pests or to eliminate severe infestations that are beyond the reach of other control methods. Many products are available that can be used at very low risk to people, animals, and the environment if they are applied according to label instructions and safety warnings. Some are sprayed directly onto plants, while others can be emitted into the air as a fog or vapor. These techniques are often necessary for managing serious infestations or preventing the spread of pests in indoor environments.
Eradication
The goal of eradication is to drive a pest population to zero. This requires that control efforts occur across a wide area, from the local to global level, and that they be sustained over time. This is often a challenging proposition. In human health, eradication of diseases like yellow fever or malaria may require a decade or more of constant effort before the disease is completely eliminated. In agriculture, the same is true for eradicating insect pests such as mites or nematodes.
In addition to cropping techniques that minimize pest populations (such as planting early, using cover crops and applying minimal or no tillage), a variety of nonchemical methods are available for eliminating pests and weeds. These include cultural practices, such as changing plant spacing or adjusting fertilizer levels; biological controls (such as introducing a pest’s natural enemies); and mechanical controls, such as weed seed destruction during harvest or soil cultivation to reduce the amount of weed seeds that germinate.
If a pesticide must be used, less risky chemicals should be employed first, such as pheromones that disrupt pest mating or baits that target specific pests. If these methods do not work, more extensive and riskier applications may be required, such as broad-spectrum spraying of pesticides. When choosing a pesticide, always read the label carefully and follow the directions for use. If you hire a professional to apply chemicals, be sure to find out what chemicals they will be using and ask for their EPA registration number. Then you can look up the chemical and its safety information on the Internet if necessary.
As the name suggests, eradicate derives from a Latin verb meaning to pull up by the roots. In fact, the root word in this case is radix, which also gives us words such as radish and radical.
While we might be able to deal with the odd ant nest in the garden or a few flies in the house, professionally trained pest control services are generally needed on commercial premises. They can help with pest proofing by creating barriers that prevent pests from entering the building and with traps and bait stations to capture a pest when it is found.
Mechanical or Physical Controls
Physical or mechanical control techniques include traps, barriers, and other techniques that disrupt the life cycle or activity of pests. These are often cornerstones of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programs. Examples include removal of weeds that harbor insects or disease organisms; destruction of crop residues such as corn stubble or squash vines that could overwinter and attract pests; and careful timing of planting to avoid problems with certain insects, such as seed corn maggot.
Biological or parasitic controls are also frequently used to reduce pest populations, either in combination with other methods or alone. This includes introducing predators, parasitoids, or disease organisms that normally occur in nature to kill or reduce a particular pest species, as well as methods that alter the chemistry of the pest, such as producing sterile males or releasing pheromones to affect mating behavior.
Eradication is a rare goal in outdoor pest situations, where prevention and suppression are generally more effective. But it is more common in enclosed areas, such as homes; schools, offices, and health care, food processing, and storage facilities; and in greenhouses, gardens, and yards. In these cases, the threshold is usually zero tolerance — even a single pest can be unacceptably harmful.
Scouting and monitoring are critical components of IPM, helping to determine the correct actions to take for each pest situation. It is important to correctly identify the pest, because inappropriate treatments can be harmful to people and the environment as well as the target pest.
Accurate monitoring can help establish action thresholds — levels of pests below which you may not want to take any control measures. Thresholds are based on esthetic or health considerations, as well as economic factors. For example, some growers have a zero tolerance for the presence of any fruit fly in a facility or garden.
Physical and mechanical control strategies are among the most fascinating, and include a wide range of tactics from Grandpa Coffey’s two hands to specialized tools like pheromone traps, fine mesh screens, and even Teflon(r)-containing tape or spray. Probably the simplest form of mechanical control is the old-fashioned fly swatter or mouse trap. Other mechanical tactics include hand-picking of large or brightly colored foliage feeders such as Japanese beetles and Mexican bean beetles; banging tree limbs with a padded stick to knock down plum curculio beetles; and shaking plants to dislodge many pests from the plant.