BIOLOGICAL PEST MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES – Part 2

Dealing with Garden Pesties Once You Have Them

The very effective and efficient Mealybug Destroyer attacking its namesake prey

Essentially, this is the “reactive” approach. For whatever reason, mother nature’s regulators and the preventative measures you have put in place (as mentioned in last week’s Part 1) have not worked. Or maybe you did not approach this preventatively.

The good news is that specialty companies offer beneficial critters for sale. You can buy these living entities in boxes, bottles, vials, on cards, and in various other forms.

One of the rarely mentioned advantages to biological pest management is that these organisms are, literally, always in seek-and-destroy mode. They do the intense searching that most gardeners fail to do. They are highly adept at pillaging large shrubs and tall trees — both plants that gardeners find difficult to spray with any kind of pesticide.

Beneficials can be grouped into four categories based on how they attack the host: