Pest Control Ballwin MO is about eliminating or minimizing the effects of unwanted organisms in homes and public areas. It may include physical, biological and chemical treatment options.
For example, trap crops like zinnia can be used to lure and kill Japanese beetles without spraying a lawn with insecticide. Nematodes, microscopic worms that help plants, can be sprayed in the soil to eat insects and suppress populations.
When it comes to pests, prevention is the best policy. Using proper inspection techniques, and the right pest repellant defenses, it is possible to keep unwanted pests away from your home or business. Whether you run a restaurant, office, or store, customers and employees alike will be less likely to return when they see evidence of pests. Preventative measures can also be very cost effective, compared to the damage and costs associated with pest infestations.
The first step in preventing pests is to eliminate their access to food, water and shelter. This is usually done by sealing entry points. Even the smallest cracks and crevices can allow pests to enter your home or business. Sealing these areas can prevent the spread of cockroaches, ants, termites and other pests. It is also important to remove debris from your yard regularly, as cluttered areas provide hiding places for pests. Clutter also provides easy access for rodents, which are a major problem in urban and suburban areas.
Keeping kitchen counters, stations and cabinets clean is another good way to keep pests at bay. Storing food in airtight containers and removing trash regularly can also help deter pests. Regularly inspecting for leaky pipes and repairing any leaks can also prevent pests.
Other preventive measures include ensuring that shrubs and trees are kept trimmed properly to cut off pest pathways. Getting rid of standing water can also be helpful, as mosquitoes and other pests often thrive in moist environments. Adding drainage systems, and eliminating the use of sand and mulch in garden areas can be effective at reducing moisture levels around homes and businesses.
Educating yourself about pests is also key to preventing their spread. Learning about a pest’s life cycle, what they like to eat and where they live, can help you make smarter decisions about your home or business’s environment. Most importantly, always remember that sprays and chemical products should be used minimally, if at all, and always in tandem with other control methods. When misused, these products can contaminate food, cause health problems, and make asthma and allergies worse for people living in or visiting your home or business.
Suppression
When a pest is present and causing damage, growers and green industry professionals use suppression techniques to reduce the population to an acceptable level. The control tactics vary depending on the type of pest and the damage levels considered unacceptable.
Prevention is the first step in a successful pest management program and includes such activities as using pest-free seeds or transplants, avoiding field sanitation problems, irrigating at times when soil moisture is most beneficial, using field and harvesting equipment between different fields, eliminating alternate hosts or sites for insect pests, and checking irrigation schedules to prevent conditions that encourage disease development. Scouting and trapping also are valuable pest control tools.
Monitoring a pest population helps to determine when the numbers reach an action threshold and control becomes necessary. This can be done through scouting (searching for, identifying and assessing the presence of and damage caused by pests), trapping, or other monitoring methods. A good monitoring program provides important information, such as timing of peak pest populations, which can help predict when pest populations will reach the action threshold and require control.
Weather conditions, especially temperature, day length and humidity, can affect the activity of pests and their rate of reproduction. Pests sometimes are affected by diseases caused by bacteria, fungi and protozoans that can suppress their growth or kill them.
Biological controls, including predators, parasitoids and pathogens, can be effective in controlling many insect pests. These organisms can be introduced from the wild, or they can be bred and released on a large scale in order to augment the natural enemies that occur in an area.
Chemical, mechanical and cultural control measures are often used in conjunction with suppression tactics to provide additional control. Chemical controls include the application of synthetic or organic chemicals, which may be used to directly impact pests or to limit access by pests to environmental factors that are needed for survival.
It is important to remember that any time a chemical is used for pest control, it must be applied according to the instructions on the product label. This is true whether the product is a pesticide, herbicide or fungicide. These labels also provide important safety information, first aid recommendations and other pertinent details that are required by law to be included on every pesticide container.
Eradication
Chemical pesticides kill or inhibit the growth of organisms that are damaging plants, animals and humans. They may contain natural products, synthesized mimics of natural products or completely synthetic chemicals. Pesticides are often the fastest control option, but they can also be harmful to humans and other organisms. They generally leave behind toxic residues that must be dealt with, and can have an adverse impact on the environment.
Physical
Traps, netting and decoys are examples of physical pest control techniques. They require the manual handling of a trap or the deployment of a decoy, and can be time-consuming to set and maintain. However, they can be effective in removing pests without the use of chemicals. They are useful in addressing nuisance pests that do not cause damage, such as flies and mosquitoes.
Biological
Biological methods of pest control involve the introduction of organisms that naturally control or destroy nuisance pests. These organisms can be predators, parasites or pathogens. In addition to reducing the need for chemical controls, biological controls can be environmentally friendly and cost-effective.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies are based on preventive approaches to pest control, including monitoring, identification, and education. Routine and consistent monitoring allows pest populations to be assessed, and appropriate actions to control them can be taken. This can include the removal of weeds in greenhouses that provide hiding places for mites and aphids, destruction of crop residues that might provide overwintering sites for pests, and cleaning of equipment that might spread them from one field to another.
Many pest problems can be prevented by keeping living areas clean and uncluttered. This is particularly important in homes, where ants and cockroaches thrive on food crumbs and other attractants and can cause disease and annoyance by chewing through wires and contaminating food. Regularly sweeping floors and vacuuming, storing food in sealed containers, and repairing cracks and holes that pests could enter through, are vital in preventing these problem pests from entering buildings. In addition, it is important to keep yards and vacant lots neatly mowed and picked up to reduce rodent harborage sites.
Biological Control
In biological control, natural enemies (predators, parasitoids, diseases, or pathogens) are introduced into a pest-producing environment to reduce their population. Unlike synthetic pesticides, the goal of biological controls is to bring populations below an economic threshold or even eradicate them.
There are three basic biological control approaches: importation, augmentation and conservation. Two of these, augmentation and conservation, are practices that can be done by homeowners. The third, classical or importation biological control is generally restricted to scientists and governmental agencies with funding to support the long and rigorous process of searching for, identifying, testing, quarantining and rearing natural enemies to release in the field.
Classical biological control is the practice of introducing natural enemies from their native habitat to control a pest that is also foreign in origin. This is most often used for exotic or invasive species that threaten agriculture and ecosystems. Examples include decapitating flies against red imported fire ants, and a number of insect parasitoids against the alligator weed (including Trichogramma wasps).
For this type of biocontrol to be successful, it is important to identify the pest species accurately to the level of subspecies. Moreover, natural enemies are host-specific and must be carefully selected to avoid unintended effects on non-target organisms. PPQ is committed to using safe and effective biological control including monitoring and evaluation as integral parts of all implementation projects.
Augmentative biological control involves enhancing or improving the presence of existing natural enemies in a pest-producing environment. For example, horticulturists can increase the numbers of beneficial nematodes that attack insects in a garden or turfgrass area. Alternatively, agricultural producers can purchase mass-produced fungi and inoculate them into fields or orchards to augment the predatory and parasitic insect population in order to decrease damage.
Ideally, biological control should be applied early in the pest life cycle to provide mortality before the population increases. However, it is not uncommon for pests to reach the point where they cause economic or aesthetic damage despite the presence of natural enemies. When this occurs, the use of a reduced-suspension chemical product may be necessary to keep the pest below an economic or aesthetic threshold. This is particularly true for invasive species that have developed resistance to the predators or parasitoids that normally control them.
