Pest Management & Plant Health

Last week, someone called our helpline about a strange phenomenon happening on her backyard plants. She described the symptoms as big, white, masses of fluffy cotton. I asked her to email some photos our helpline address (ucmgstanislaus@ucanr.edu).

Last May, a Turlock almond grower noticed nearly all the nuts on a row of trees in his orchard had fallen to the ground. It looked like we shook this row, he said. I was scared. I thought the whole orchard was going to go. He called UC Cooperative Extension.

Many gardeners and landscapers enjoy growing and caring for roses. Through careful selection of varieties and appropriate cultivation, roses can be grown with a minimum of pest problems.

Palm trees are commonly seen in California, making some think about the tree-lined streets of Hollywood, or sitting by the pool somewhere.

Gophers are well-known and certainly unwelcome pests in landscapes, gardens, lawns, and athletic turf. More correctly called pocket gophers, these rodents mostly remain hidden underground in tunnels and feed on plants from below, sometimes pulling whole plants into their tunnels.

A pollinator garden is a study in diversity--and of inclusion and exclusion. The residents, the immigrants, the fly-bys, the crawlers, the wigglers, the jumpers. The big, bad and bugly. The prey and the predators. The vegetarians and carnivores.

A strawberry field in Nipomo (Photo by Surendra Dara) The traditional Integrated Pest Management (IPM) model is focused on maintaining ecological balance in the cropping system with some attention to the economics of pest management related to the yield losses.

In Part I, we discussed why mosquitoes bite, and which mosquito species can spread West Nile and Zika virus. Now, let's talk about what mosquitoes need to reproduce, how to prevent them from breeding around your home, and best methods to protect yourself and your family while outdoors.

Oh, what a (Moth) Night! It was a family night in more ways than one. Families who attended the Bohart Museum of Entomology's annual Moth Night last Saturday, Aug. 3, not only saw specimens from scores of insect families inside the UC Davis insect museum, but outside as well.

You've probably read a lot lately in the news about West Nile virus and Zika virus. In mid-June, the first human case of West Nile virus in Stanislaus County was diagnosed. This past week, mosquitoes that can carry the Zika virus were found in our county.