Pest Management & Plant Health

When planning your spring garden, one of the first decisions you must make is whether to use those seeds you saved from last year.

As written in my blog post from 2 days ago, I found carpenter ants in my house recently and decided to call a pest control company to help manage them.

[Originally published as Pesticide Briefs: What Do These Terms Mean? in the Fall 2018 issue of the Retail Nursery and Garden Center IPM News.] Last summer, we defined what a pesticide is and gave a few examples.

You just KNOW that some plants are considered weeds. Their common names give them away. They sound awful. Giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum). Ripgut brome (Bromus diandrus). Devil's claw (Proboscidea lutea). Smellmelon (Cucumis melo). Itchgrass (Rottboellia cochinchinensis).

You just KNOW that some plants are considered weeds. Their common names give them away. They sound awful. Giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum). Ripgut brome (Bromus diandrus). Devil's claw (Proboscidea lutea). Smellmelon (Cucumis melo). Itchgrass (Rottboellia cochinchinensis).

It's going to be a long weekend, but it's a short one when you consider all the things you can do and see at the eighth annual UC Davis Biodiversity Museum Day on Saturday, Feb. 16. Bring your family. Bring your friends. Bring your camera.

Tsetse fly expert Geoffrey Attardo, a medical entomologist and assistant professor with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is featured in a New York Times' article today (Feb. 12) on tsetse flies.

Did you read the article in today's New York Times about tsetse flies and the scientists who research them? Totally fascinating.

On Thursday, February 7, the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) Stanislaus County Master Gardeners held their very first class. The topic was spring vegetable gardening.

Postdoctoral scientist Antoine Brieux of the Joanna Chiu lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, will speak on "Understanding the Molecular Mechanisms Underlying Photoperiodic Time Measurement in Drosophila melanogaster" at the next departmental seminar.