Act now to prevent pest problems next year
6:42 p.m. Friday, August 15, 2008
Are you fully bugged-out this year? Then come along with me. I am heading out to find out what we can do to keep their numbers down for next year.
Dave Jackson of Jackson's Greenhouse tells me the number one thing to ensure lower pest populations is to make sure your lawn, garden, trees and shrubs are well fertilized and heathy.
"If your trees and shrubs are healthy and your neighbor's aren't, guess where they're gonna be?" jackson said.
And if you don't fertilize your trees and shrubs every year, they will not be able to withstand the harsh climate of Kansas and they will become stressed.
"Sometimes a stressed plant that's attacked repeatedly over the course of several years, you'll actually lose the tree," Jackson said.
Dave says that the best time to fertilize your trees and shrubs is between Halloween and Thanksgiving.
And while you are buying your all-purpose fertilizer this fall, Jackson says that you should pick up a non-chemical based oil, sold at most greenhouses, that you should spray on your trees and shrubs when they bud next spring, to keep pests off them when they are in full foliage.
And if you didn't put something on your evergreens this year to bite the bagworm, you can make it an outdoor activity on a nice day this fall or early winter by manually picking as many bagworm egg sacks as you can.
While it may not be the best way to enjoy those rare warm days, at least there can be a little humor involved in it, sort of like if you don't want to go to some meeting, you can tell them that you are tied up not sorting your sock drawer, but picking your bagworms off.
Humor and patience are also good things to bear in mind because there are just some pests we will have to endure.
For more information, log onto www.ext.vt.edu.
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