BUGS THAT BUG YOU ….

there are no shortage of bugs and insects that bother us.

There are a few that are incredibly devastating to your trees, shrubs, flowers, vegetables and turf and most are really a nuisance unless you want them gone. 

Annoying Insects

• While we all have a different tolerance for these critters, I find them extremely annoying. There is no shortage of companies who will provide a quote to spray your properties for all kinds of nuisance critters, but YOU should be a savvy shopper and make well-educated decisions.
• Some of the most asked about insects are, ticks, mosquitoes, gnats, Japanese beetles, and more….let’s break them down a bit more:
• Ticks and mosquitoes can cause more serious health concerns and problems, so it’s understandable that we all want to minimize that concern and create a safer space for us and our families to enjoy, but knowing WHAT can be done, WHEN it should be done and HOW it’s done as well as HOW do these treatments affect the rest of my property MATTER.

Devastating Insects

• There are some truly devastating pests that can kill our trees, but the fact is that ANY issue left unchecked is potential to kill any of your plant life.
• Boring insects will ABSOLUTELY kill your trees and turn them into a MAJOR hazard. We’ve all seen what a tree falling on a home can do so it’s important that if you notice anything different or if you wan to be proactive, talk to an ISA Certified Arborist. These professionals along with other credentialed arborists like Registered Consulting Arborists can help ensure your trees do NOT have these invasive pests. Boring insects are bark beetles, emerald ash borer and others.

Insect Control and Thresholds

• There are very environmentally friendly options now to help ensure the above devastating pests remain at bay OR if you treat your trees BEFORE these pests attempt to move in, can minimize chances of infestations starting. These are trunk injections. Trunk injections minimize chances of pesticides reaching off target areas, like YOU AND YOUR FAMILY (and that includes our furry, feathery or scaly friends). These applications provide an almost immediate solution targeting these pests and can last for a season or two many times.
• For “easy” to control insects, a true professional won’t just offer a pesticide application because we know that again, this is a temporary solution and a true professional wants to do the best and most responsible job FOR YOU. A professional will discuss “thresholds” with you. These thresholds are crucial to providing a recommendation and plan. The thresholds professionals look for even before engaging in this conversation are:
• Is the issue creating an immediate need for treatment or the plant will fail?
• Is the issue causing irreparable monetary damage?
• While they may not necessarily use that word, they will most likely ask questions like:
• Does this really bother you? And How?
• Example….professionals will receive calls saying, “there’s a fungus on my trees, shrubs, plants and it’s black and killing my plant, can you come look? Many times, this is called black sooty mold and is a direct result of a piercing sucking insect. A piercing sucking insect can be aphids, plant hoppers like Spotted Lanternfly or more. They feed on your plants and excrete “honeydew” (poop) and the sooty mold then grows on this very sticky substance. While you are concerned about the “black stuff”, we are looking for the culprit but you are fed up with the black and how difficult it is to remove, so your threshold has been exceeded.
• Is this something we can monitor and address if becomes a bigger concern?
• Let’s use the above example again….we arrive to evaluate the situation and yes, black sooty mold is a major pain, but it’s really minor. WHY? Because there are predatory insects in nature that can help keep those populations down and we are also looking for them. So, if you have a great amount of ladybugs, we may recommend monitoring to let the ladybugs do their job. On average, ladybugs can eat about 50 aphids in a day. If the aphid problem just started AND you have ladybugs, you may already have the solution in front of you. If the population of aphids is too many to count AND you only see a few ladybugs, well that’s a different conversation.

Treatment

• So, we’ve touched on the very basics of bugs/insects. Best recommendation? Talk with a certified professional who can help ensure YOU are not:
• Wasting money
• Spraying pesticides willy nilly
• Providing an optimal solution to keep things in balance
• Taking any unnecessary risk by spraying something that does not need to be sprayed OR spraying something that will affect the very helpful critters who make a difference every day.