After a long and brutal winter in central Ohio, it’s time to get reacquainted with warm days spent enjoying the outdoors with your friends and family! While you are admiring the new foliage in your landscape, there are potential pests plotting to set up residence and populate in your trees and shrubs. To maintain a beautiful and comfortable yard throughout the summer and fall, you’ll want to consider how you are going to keep the pests at bay.
A popular method of pest management is chemical control. Chemical control is the use of pesticides such as insecticides, miticides, fungicides, bactericides, and herbicides to mitigate harmful pest populations when natural and other applied controls do not meet pest management needs. There are two techniques often used when spraying pesticides: target spraying and cover spraying.
Cover spraying is an improper and potentially harmful approach to pest control. With this method, all landscape plants are treated with broad-spectrum pesticides without first properly identifying the pest and the potential for plant injury. Cover spraying can also disrupt your landscapes ecosystem, killing off insects that are actually beneficial.
Despite common belief, not all insects and mites pose a threat to your plants. In fact, certain flies, beetles, and wasps feed on aphids and other insects that can do major damage to your trees and shrubs. Biological control naturally keeps pest populations at tolerable levels. Cover spraying can cause a disturbance in the populations of predators feeding on the harmful insects.
Target spraying is a more effective and responsible approach to pest management. In this approach, the pests are correctly identified first by a licensed professional and then the severity of the population is determined. If a pesticide application is warranted, the appropriate pesticide (or combination of pesticides) is selected, mixed using the ideal dosage, and applied at the correct time and frequency.
When target spraying, only the affected plants are treated. It’s a more economic and environmentally friendly approach to ensuing that your yard’s ecosystem is kept in proper balance. Ahlum & Arbor’s licensed pesticide technicians employ this method after a thorough site inspection by one of our ISA Certified Arborists.
If you plan to entertain, grill out, or simply relax in your yard this season, Ahlum & Arbor can help you keep the pests at bay! Schedule an appointment with one of our knowledgeable Certified Arborists by calling (614) 876-5622 or emailing us at info@ahlumarbor.com. We hope you have a happy and pest free summer!