Pest Management & Plant Health

Instructions for making homemade mixtures to control pests are easy to find online and in social media, and it's tempting to make your own home remedy when pests invade.

Our Tips for Terrific Tomatoes class is now available to watch on our UCCE Stanislaus County Master Gardener YouTube Channel. Master Gardeners Terry Harper and Heidi Aufdermaur delivered some great tips for growing successful tomato plants.

Join UC Cooperative Extension for a FREE online workshop.

As the weather warms up, we see more insect activity in gardens and landscapes, and you may also notice more activity of insect pests in your home. Common insect pests found indoors in springtime can include carpet beetles, fleas, fungus gnats, and boxelder bugs.

Everyone loves home grown tomatoes and other vegetables like peppers, corn, and squash. But pests like them too.

Ever seen a beneficial insect and a pest sharing the same blossom? At a recent visit to the UC Davis Ecological Garden at the Student Farm, we watched a honey bee, Apis mellifera, and a lygus bug nymph, Lygus hesperus, foraging on a batchelor button, Centaurea cyanus. The bee: the beneficial insect.

The spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) is an invasive pest in the United States that was first detected in 2014 in Pennsylvania. It is a pest of numerous cultivated and wild hosts.

Yellow Starthistle is a plant of Old-World origin that arrived in California in the mid 1800's. It is believed that it made its way to California in contaminated alfalfa seed from Europe.

From Farm Progress (https://www.farmprogress.com/weeds/international-effort-combat-crop-threatening-weeds) ************** Anne Manning | Apr 22, 2021 Every multi-acre farmer and backyard gardener knows weeds are a constant, formidable foe of successful plant production.

The Red Coats are coming. The Red Coats are coming. No, not an army of soldiers. Soldier beetles. These insects (family Cantharida) resemble the uniforms of the British soldiers of the American Revolution, which is apparently how their name originated.