How to Implement Integrated Pest Management in Your Landscape Design

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You don’t have to start a war on pests for a beautiful landscaped yard. Use healthier, more sustainable ways to protect your garden and yard, such as integrated pest management (IPM) methods. IPM is a science-backed approach to controlling bugs without becoming over-reliant on chemicals and other harmful practices. 

What Is Integrated Pest Management and Why Do You Need It?

Integrated pest management, or IPM, is an eco-friendly strategy that uses natural techniques to control bug invasions. Instead of spraying harmful pesticides, you start by understanding each critter has a unique relationship with your property and has a specific life cycle.

The heart of IPM is not ridding yourself of insects — it’s about working in harmony with nature to prevent problems before they begin. It’s about choosing the least harmful methods to handle bug invasions swiftly. 

IPM Benefits

You may have a blank canvas yard or be busy revamping your existing yard landscape — IPM can help you regain control, save money and attract beneficial animals like pollinators and wildlife. Some benefits include:

• Using less pesticides: You’ll only need pesticides when it’s really necessary. 
• Achieving long-term results: Use thoughtful strategies to achieve long-term results targeted at the root cause of any infestations.  
• Building healthier landscapes: Using IPM lets you choose stronger and healthier plants that are resilient to scourge. 
• Improving biodiversity: Encouraging beneficial insects, birds, other animals and microbes in your yard lets you return to nature’s optimal cycles. 

Designing a Landscape With IPM in Mind

For integrated pest management to work, you’ll want to consider how prevention is part of the landscape plan. This is what your plan looks like:

1. Make Smart Plant Choices

Before beautifying the landscape, you should examine how plants control nuisance insects. Healthy plants won’t attract as many pests, so use intentional planting for a more balanced landscape. Many professionals at nurseries and gardening shops are an excellent resource and can advise you, but you should look for plants that:

• Are native to the area: These plants are adapted to the area, won’t get sick as easily and won’t attract as many pests. 
• Have pest-resistant qualities: Whether creating a vegetable garden or a landscaped yard, selecting a disease-resistant plant cultivar that’s resilient against bug damage is smart.
• Fit into groups in your landscape: Group your plants according to their needs. Plant thirsty plants in a natural depression area or rain garden, where water collects to help with drainage, instead of planting them on high ground, where they will require extra watering and may dry out. 

2. Use Cultural Controls

You develop a culture or habit with your landscape or garden. It can be as simple as how frequently you mow the lawn or pick up pet waste. Little habits form your gardening culture, and you should think responsibly about them. Some healthy habits or cultural controls include:

• Rotating crops: If you plant a vegetable patch, you should keep track of what you plant to rotate between different species, which feeds the soil and avoids a soil-borne malady. 
• Selecting companion plants: Nature looks after its own, and if you choose great plant buddies, they do the same. Some plant combinations repel pests, such as pairing marigolds with tomatoes. Certain plants can be your companions, too, such as planting a bed of lemongrass or peppermint below your windows to reduce the number of mosquitoes feasting on you in summer. 
• Maintaining great sanitation: If it’s rotten, it should go. So collect rotting leaves, dead plants and diseased foliage and remove these from your yard. If you believe in composting, avoid adding rotten or diseased plants. 
• Using wise watering and fertilizing: Over-fertilizing your plants or lawn can attract pests and damage your plants. Likewise, too much water can create rotting stems — a bug’s life come true. Pesticide management starts with giving plants what they need, no more and no less. 

3. Add Mechanical and Physical Barriers

A little elbow grease and sweat equity can help you out. Creating barriers and using manual tools can make a big difference to healthy planted beds without removing or harming beneficial insects. Spraying insecticides to remove pests also eliminates bees, valuable pollinators at risk of extinction. Increasing global temperatures are already threatening bumblebee populations with dehydration — the added risk of insecticide-treated plants can push them over the edge into extinction. To avoid bothersome insects and poison, consider:

• Mulching around plants: Slow weed growth with biological mulching, such as tree bark chips, so invasive plants don’t outgrow native ones. Mulching also helps regulate moisture.
• Install row covers, netting or cloches: Use physical barriers to block cabbage moths, snails and deer.
• Handpick to remove pests: When beetles or caterpillars are few, remove them by hand. 
• Use sticky traps: Eliminate ants, termites and cockroaches with bait stations and sticky strips that trap aphids, flies and whiteflies.

4. Implement Biological Controls

Nature strives for balance, so it has its own control measures to ensure all species survive and thrive. Make your yard a welcoming place for nature’s pest controls and wildlife to thrive. Protect natural enemies to ensure they can reduce plagues. To create a balanced landscape, you can:

• Attract predator insects: Ladybugs, lacewings and parasitic wasps are beneficial and thrive with the right flowering herbs to attract them. They also feast on bugs like caterpillars, aphids and ants. 
• Install birdhouses: Giving beneficial bug-eating birds a place to live means they’ll forage and consume loads of insects. Make lodgings for wrens, swallows and even bats. 
• Create predatory homes: With a habitat like a small pond, your landscape will thrive with frogs, lizards and dragonflies, which all catch gnats and other pests. 
• Buy beneficial insects: If predatory insects are no longer available in your area, you can easily purchase parasitic wasps and release them, which can help cut back on harmful invertebrates. Natural enemies are worth protecting. 
• Provide water stops: A bee-friendly drinking spot or other water source can attract insects and natural wildlife, as water may be scarce in your area.

5. Apply Pesticide Smartly

When your garden is overrun with bugs, chemicals may be a last resort to help you get through the worst. Instead of spraying liberally, you should carefully consider your use of pesticides: when, where and what type you use may provide you with integrative means to use IPM. Even better is to use a biopesticide sourced from nature — though you should check the product’s list of additional ingredients to ensure it’s truly safe for your yard.

If you have to use chemicals:

• Identify the pest: Don’t spray before you know what you are trying to eradicate. What it is will determine what you use. 
• Spot treat: Instead of a coverage treatment, use a spot treatment, targeting only vulnerable areas like nests and contaminated plants. You can also consider removing a compromised plant to protect the surrounding plants. 
• Select specific treatments: Use targeted treatments like insecticidal soaps, neem oil that suffocates pests and microbial pesticides to treat the identified bugs. 
• Avoid broad-spectrum pesticides: These harm beneficial bugs and useful pollinators. 
• Follow the instructions: Never over-mix a herbicide or insecticide. The formula’s design treats the problem so it doesn’t cause other issues like insecticide resistance.  

6. Monitor and Adjust

Remember, IPM isn’t a one-and-done solution. Your landscape is ever-evolving, and each season brings new challenges. Creating a pest-resistant landscape requires hands-on care. You should:

• Inspect plants regularly for signs of being eaten.
• Record your findings to track outbreaks and how weather changes affect your chosen plants.
• Think flexibly and adjust your management if you notice something isn’t working. 

FAQ

What Is Integrated Pest Management and How Is It Different From Traditional Pest Control?

IPM is an integrated or holistic approach to nature and managing insects in your landscape. This method uses several strategies, like habitat design, mechanical barriers and spot treatments instead of broad-spectrum pesticide applications, to control pests and minimize environmental damage over the long term. Traditional methods relied on routine pesticide applications for immediate results at the cost of other members of the biome. 

Can I Use IPM in a Small Garden or Yard?

Absolutely! IPM techniques scale easily for any size space. Simple steps like choosing native, resilient plants and improving the soil health can help your landscape thrive. It doesn’t need expert knowledge, just environmental monitoring and awareness. 

Do I Have to Stop Using Pesticides Entirely in an IPM Landscape Approach? 

IPM may include some pesticide management when outbreaks threaten to overwhelm the landscape. However, the focus is on poison management, which is only used as a last resort and in limited quantities. You should pick products designed to treat specific species and protect beneficial bugs. 

Pest-Free Landscaping With IPM

Consider using an integrated pest management approach to your landscaping needs. With a thoughtful selection of native plants, you’re off to a good start. Invite beneficial wildlife and insects to your yard, and these will aid you in removing harmful species like aphids, beetles and gnats. 

With IPM, you can control your landscape to thrive in harmony with plants and animals without using harmful pesticides that cause significant damage to plants, people and the natural environment. 

Have you implemented your own IPM plan in your landscape? Please share your details on our social channels.