D32—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, May 19,1984
Integrated pest management comes to lawns
COLLEGE PARK, MD. - Ah
Spring! With the official arrival of
the vernal equinox, homeowners
can turn their attention from
soaring fuel bills, sudden snow
squalls and gas line freezeups.
Instead they can anticipate bright
balmy weekends, suntans-and,
yes, yard work, weeds and insect
pests.
It’s a shame that anything
holding as'inuch promise as warm
weather also must bring with it the
drudgery of landscape care and
the partner problems of chemical
sprays for weeds and insects.
Even if the homeowner opts for
one of the commercial companies
that promise to liberate you from
hostage weekends, homeowners
still must make the conscious
decision to fill their little kingdoms
with chemicals and sprays, or
suffer crabgrass and beetles.
If need not be a feast or famine
decision, though, say researchers
at the University of Maryland.
Suburban homeowners can bypass
a lot of the chemicals and still have
a beautiful, relatively weed and
insect-free landscape.
How? University entomologists
for years have been using a
technique called Integrated Pest
Management or IPM to help
farmers save money and use fewer
chemicals on their crops. Now, the
same entomologists are bringing
the battle and some of their suc
cesses to the urban front because
their studies show that some
heavily populated areas receive
more pesticides per acre than
farm land.
Urban IPM, say the en
tomologists, stresses managing
plant diseases and insect and weed
populations before they reach
proportions that absolutely require
chemical attention.
It’s a lot like preventive or
holistic medicine, explain John
Davidson and Mike Raupp, en
tomologists at Maryland.
“We recommend using what we
call ‘scouts’ to monitor the
patient’s health. Early detection of
harmful insects, weeds and
diseases is important and a
specialist’s diagnosis may be
followed by recommendations to
use biological controls, cultural
techniques or, if necessary, careful
use of selected pesticides,”
Davidson says.
Those biological controls, he
explains, can include allowing
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beneficial insects to prosper
alongside the harmful ones. Some
microscopic species of wasps
actually attack other insects and
help keep their populations at
harmless levels. And predators
like lady beetles are natural
enemies of harmful aphids.
Cultural techniques, Davidson
adds, include proper pruning,
mulching and fertilizing to keep
plants healthy enough to resist
insect attacks.
The keys to any chemical use
are: selecting the right chemical,
applying it correctly and applying
it at the right time, according to
Davidson.
“Indiscriminate cover spraymg
at the first sign of insects any
insects is a little like cutting off
a patient’s head if he complains of
a simple headache,” explains
Davidson. “It’s a drastic measure
because it is applied to more than
just the problem area. A simpler,
certainly less expensive treatment
would work equally well. ’ ’
In spite of all the recent attention
focused on the reported ill effects
of some chemical pesticides,
American suburbanites still dump
tons of pesticides on their shrubs,
trees and lawns each year, ac
cording to Raupp.
“A recent survey in Florida
showed that in one year
homeowners used over 2 million
pounds of pesticides in urban
areas,” Raupp says.
However, studies in Maryland
also show that up to 53% of the
homeowners in one pilot program
said they were more likely to use
IPM techniques than chemical
sprays for insect pests.
So, you say, this is all fine in
theory. But wouldn’t it be easier to
simply knock out all those bugs
with chemicals, even if you lose a
couple of the good ones sort of
sacrificing a few innocents for the
good of the lawn and garden?
In the very short run, maybe yes,
Davidson and Raupp say.
But research has shown for some
time something we’ve all
suspected that the more
chemicals we throw at insect
pests, the more resident and or
nery they become.
Not only have some insects built
up immunities to poisons now on
the market, but some species have
built up what entomologists call
“cross-resistance” they are
immune to chemicals to which
they have never even been ex
posed.
If IPM works so well, why
haven’t the techniques been
adopted by more homeowners and
commercial firms?
“It’s sort of
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situation,” Davidson explains. “In
spite of all the successes some
farmers have enjoyed with IPM in
the last 22 years, very little work
has been done in urban settings.”
Consequently, adds Davidson,
urban homeowners know very
little about IPM; they have
created little if any demand for its
availability; and, commercial
films have been reluctant to offer
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IPM it only a latent market exists.
Catch-22 enters the picture
because homeowners in isolated
pockets of the state are becoming
more aware of IPM, but have few
commercial firms to turn to.
And, adds Davidson, there are
commercial firms cashing in on
the cache of the name IPM,
claiming to offer IPM services that
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