A Day of IPM
Today I attended a great series of lectures at an annual IPM (Integrated Pest Management) seminar here in Seattle. Lecturers discussed green building initiatives and methods, growing healthier public spaces, plant response to climate change (rising temps and rising CO2 in the atmosphere), nursery container recycling programs (that go beyond just nursery container plastics), support hotlines for professional gardeners who need a little help now & again, bug gardens and conservation biology, and more. Whew! It was a lot of great information in a short amount of time.
It was thrilling to learn of all the methods my co-horts are employing to improve the environment. These messages helped balance out the fright that plant response to climate change invoked. Knowing that there are places working hard to recycle otherwise non-recyclable plastics, knowing that colleges are instituting programs to find new and better ways to plant and maintain gardens in which beneficials will outweigh damaging insects, learning that our city (and others too) are instituing programs so that new construction will no longer remove all green space in its path but instead is required to (and incentivized) to construct with replacement green spaces, roofs and walls — these things give me hope and inspiration and ways to help my clients even more.
When I got back to the office, I had a conference call set up. A client had taken my advice and ordered a soil pathology test from Ribeiro labs. Turns out he has Fusarium and Pythium — yuck! But, he’s actively seeking out ways to rebuild the soil without removing it all. He’s working with me and with Dr. Ribeiro to fight off these root rots via environmental controls first. Again, I’m inspired by my client. His interest in doing the right thing and his patience and willingness to put his back into the problem means I’m doing something right. I’m sending him down the right paths to find good solutions — for his garden and for the environment as a whole.
One thing I realize as I write this: I need to continue to seek out more information on integrated pest managment. I need to continue to learn about garden pests, pathogens, vectors, etc…When I think about the size of the insect kingdom, I realize I will never know all the possible pests. Likely, I will never meet a small fraction of them in my lifetime. Then, if I begin exploring the various fungi in the world, I know the same is true for those.
And, as I think about what I call a “pest” and what I call a “beneficial”, I find myself wondering if in a different place their roles would be reversed. For instance, aren’t most fungi a part of the natural decomposition cycle? And isn’t that critical to lifecycles? Another example is a hornet or a yellowjacket. I consider them both pests as well as beneficials — they can sting the heck out of me, but they can also pollinate and eat other pests like aphids. So is this all a toe-may-toe/toe-mah-toe discussion? I’m not sure, but I plan to keep exploring and asking the questions that lead me, well, probably to more questions than exact answers.
November 9th, 2007 at 8:14 am
How to kill pests without killing yourself or the earth……
There are about 50 to 60 million insect species on earth - we have named only about 1 million and there are only about 1 thousand pest species - already over 50% of these thousand pests are already resistant to our volatile, dangerous, synthetic pesticide POISONS. We accidentally lose about 25,000 to 100,000 species of insects, plants and animals every year due to “man’s footprint”. But, after poisoning the entire world and contaminating every living thing for over 60 years with these dangerous and ineffective pesticide POISONS we have not even controlled much less eliminated even one pest species and every year we use/misuse more and more pesticide POISONS to try to “keep up”! Even with all of this expensive and unnecessary pollution - we lose more and more crops and lives to these thousand pests every year.
We are losing the war against these thousand pests mainly because we insist on using only synthetic pesticide POISONS and fertilizers There has been a severe “knowledge drought” - a worldwide decline in agricultural R&D, especially in production research and safe, more effective pest control since the advent of synthetic pesticide POISONS and fertilizers. Today we are like lemmings running to the sea insisting that is the “right way”. The greatest challenge facing humanity this century is the necessity for us to double our global food production with less land, less water, less nutrients, less science, frequent droughts, more and more contamination and ever-increasing pest damage.
National Poison Prevention Week, March 18-24,2007 was created to highlight the dangers of poisoning and how to prevent it. One study shows that about 70,000 children in the USA were involved in common household pesticide-related (acute) poisonings or exposures in 2004. At least two peer-reviewed studies have described associations between autism rates and pesticides (D’Amelio et al 2005; Roberts EM et al 2007 in EHP). It is estimated that 300,000 farm workers suffer acute pesticide poisoning each year just in the United States - No one is checking chronic contamination.
In order to try to help “stem the tide”, I have just finished re-writing my IPM encyclopedia entitled: THE BEST CONTROL II, that contains over 2,800 safe and far more effective alternatives to pesticide POISONS. This latest copyrighted work is about 1,800 pages in length and is now being updated at my new website at http://www.stephentvedten.com/ .
This new website at http://www.stephentvedten.com/ has been basically updated; all we have left to update is Chapter 39 and to renumber the pages. All of these copyrighted items are free for you to read and/or download. There is simply no need to POISON yourself or your family or to have any pest problems.
Stephen L. Tvedten
2530 Hayes Street
Marne, Michigan 49435
1-616-677-1261
“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.” –Victor Hugo
November 9th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Stephen, Thanks for sharing. I look forward to checking out your publication.