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How to Protect Your Garden from Pests Naturally
Pest Control Van Nuys is a way to limit the damage caused by insects and rodents. It involves removing food and hiding places for them, keeping bushes and trees trimmed, and using traps or baits.
Pest control companies often enjoy high profit margins and repeat business. They also work in challenging conditions, including crawling in confined spaces.

Preventing pest problems is often the most cost-effective part of any pest control program. It saves money by avoiding expensive damages and full exterminations. Moreover, it improves the quality of life by keeping living environments clean and healthy. Effective preventive tactics include a thorough cleaning routine, regular trash removal, and preventing moisture from attracting pests. Prevention also includes structural treatments, which block common entry points of pests and deny them access to a property.
Understanding what makes a pest thrive is essential to controlling it. It helps to identify its food, water and shelter sources. In addition, it is helpful to know its lifespan and life cycle. This information highlights a pest’s vulnerabilities, making it easier to control.
A pest’s natural enemies often suppress its numbers, such as parasites and predators. It is important to consider these enemies when devising pest control strategies, especially because there is usually a lag between the increase in a pest’s population and the corresponding increase in its enemy populations.
Chemicals are sometimes necessary to control some pests, especially when other methods fail. Fortunately, many of today’s pesticides are designed to eliminate only the targeted organism while minimizing harm to nontarget species and humans. When pesticides are used, it is important to follow the label’s instructions and safety warnings.
Other mechanical or physical controls can be effective against some pests, such as traps, screens, fences and barriers. Altering the environment may also be useful in controlling some pests, such as by changing the amount of light or introducing heat or cold.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an ecosystem-based approach to managing pests and their damage. It is based on monitoring, inspections and data collection, which guides the selection of appropriate actions. IPM uses a variety of techniques to achieve long-term prevention of pests or their damage, such as biological control, habitat manipulation and modification of cultural practices.
If you suspect a pest infestation, immediately contact your pest management professional for a pest trend analysis, risk assessment and treatment recommendation. Make sure to provide detailed information about sightings or indicators, including the time and location where they occurred. This will help your PCO to provide the most effective service possible and to determine what controls are best for your situation.
Suppression
Pests can cause direct damage to plants, animals or structures such as homes and buildings. They can also introduce disease and contaminate food. When their numbers reach a threshold that causes unacceptable damage, we can take action to control them. The goal of pest management is to solve problems while minimizing risks to people and the environment. This is accomplished through a process known as integrated pest management, or IPM. IPM can be used in urban, agricultural and wildland/natural areas.
Step 1: Learn about the pest you are dealing with. Find out what it eats, where it lives and how it reproduces. This information highlights the pest’s weaknesses, which can be used to your advantage.
Understanding a pest’s needs and habits can help you decide whether or not to use a suppression tactic. Some pests have a very negative impact, such as rodents that can chew electrical wires and spread diseases like hantavirus, leptospirosis and Salmonella. Others can be a nuisance, such as wasps, hornets and bees that sting or annoy people. Some may have a strong smell, or look scary or grotesque, such as spiders and silverfish. Many have aggressive behavior, such as mud dauber wasps and yellowjackets. And some contaminate food and personal items, such as bed bugs, cockroaches, cluster flies and clothes moths.
Methods that physically trap or exclude pests are called mechanical controls. These include screens, traps and barriers. Some methods can alter the environment to suppress pests, such as radiation, heat and electricity. Changes in water, such as adding or removing humidity, can affect some pests.
Chemicals that poison or repel pests are called pesticides. They are a common form of pest control, and are usually applied as baits or sprays. Some have low risk for humans, as long as they are used according to the label instructions and safety warnings. Others have a high risk for human health and should only be applied by licensed pest control technicians.
Suppression tactics are often combined with preventative and eradication strategies in order to reduce pest populations to levels that can be tolerated. Once corrective actions have been taken, it is important to monitor the results of the suppression tactics (see Monitoring page). In addition to assessing how well a suppression tactic worked, this step can also reveal information that can guide future prevention and avoidance tactics.
Eradication
When pesticides are used, it is important to make sure that they are targeted to the correct insect and at an appropriate stage of development. Otherwise, the application may not control the pests and it will have other negative consequences such as contaminating non-target organisms or polluting water. Pesticides can also be ineffective if they are overused or if the environment is unfavorable for their use.
The use of pesticides should be minimized to the extent possible. If pesticides are necessary, they should be applied only when the damage caused by the pests is significant or if other pest control methods have not been effective. The selection of pesticides is very important and should be based on the information provided on the pesticide label and in the NMSU Pest Management Guide.
Overuse of pesticides often leads to the emergence of resistant pest populations. This is because the use of a single pesticide kills all the insects that are susceptible to the active ingredient, while leaving the strongest resistant pests to mate and propagate. Resistance can be reduced by using different chemicals for the same pest problem or by applying the chemical in a manner that limits its ability to kill.
An integrated pest management (IPM) program focuses on reducing the numbers of pests to a level that does not harm crops. This is usually done by restricting pests for only part of the growing season and spraying them only when there is a high risk of economic injury. To do this, the pest population must be monitored and carefully evaluated. This evaluation must take into account the environmental conditions that led to the pest infestation and other factors such as weather or the presence of natural enemies.
IPM plans include cultural, biological, genetic and physical controls. These are designed to modify the environmental conditions that support pest activity, directly reduce pest populations or indirectly limit their damage by making them less suitable for the desired plants. Biological controls involve the use of predators, parasitoids and pathogens to manage pests. Predators and parasitoids are organisms that kill or injure pests and disperse them, while pathogens are bacteria or fungi that cause disease in pests.
Monitoring
The monitoring part of pest control involves regular inspections (often called scouting) to determine the presence and extent of pests, pest conducive conditions and damage. This information functions like an early warning system, helping to prevent or minimize a pest outbreak and to track pest population trends. Monitoring also enables the identification of natural enemies, which can keep pest populations in check. It also helps in determining if loss is likely to occur and what control tactics would be most effective.
Depending on the situation, the best tool for monitoring is a simple checklist, a spreadsheet or an electronic data collection system. Ideally, scouting data should be collected on a consistent basis throughout the growing season and into the winter to help scouts anticipate pest problems.
It’s important to recognize that pests are not the same everywhere, so a good monitoring program will be site and crop-specific. Often, monitoring is time-consuming and labor intensive, but it can pay off in improved decision making.
For example, greenhouses require frequent scouting for insect pests throughout the year. A simple checklist with space to write dates, trap locations and pest numbers is an excellent way to document current populations and a history of pest problems.
In the case of rodents, it’s important to identify potential harborage areas such as bushes and shrubbery or equipment corners, and then monitor them regularly for signs of gnawing and burrowing activity. An extendable mirror and a flashlight can be valuable tools for scouting dark, secluded areas that might be difficult to see. In addition, a magnifying glass can help identify insect parts and frass (excrement) that are indicative of pest presence or activity.
Some pests are continuous and always present, such as roaches or rats in homes, while others are sporadic or cyclical, such as rodents in operating rooms of health care facilities. It is important to establish threshold levels based on esthetic or economic concerns, so that action is taken only when the pests reach unacceptable levels of damage or injury. This is an essential element of IPM.