No. 1/April 28, 2022
Welcome to the Newsletter
Welcome to the 2022 edition of the Home, Yard, and Garden Pest Newsletter. This newsletter is written to keep professional landscapers, arborists, golf course superintendents, lawn care personnel, and garden center operators up-to-date on the commercial management of diseases, weeds, insects, and other pests. We will report on the pests we are seeing and anticipating throughout Illinois. To assist us in these efforts, we ask for your help in reporting pest situations as you see them throughout the year. Your assistance will help us to provide relevant and timely content for all of Illinois. Most of the newsletter's authors are only able to scout a small portion of east-central Illinois. Please send pest reports to Travis Cleveland at tclevela@illinois.edu.
Modified Growing Degree Days
Insect development is temperature dependent. We can use degree days to help predict insect emergence and activity. Home, Yard, and Garden readers can use the links below with the degree day accumulations above to determine what insect pests could be active in their area.
Spring Tips for Pollinator Protection
Pollinators can be some of the first spring insects we notice in the landscape. Honey bees and native bees may begin to forage on grape hyacinth or snowdrops. You may even notice butterflies like, my favorite, the mourning cloak, as they emerge from their overwintering sites. This makes spring a great time to brush up on tips for pollinator protection.
Controlling Star-of-Bethlehem
Star-of-Bethlehem, Ornithogalum umbellatum, can be a pretty flower in the right place. Unfortunately, it can be a prolific spreader and a few plants can turn into several plants within a few years. Plants can appear at random as tall clumps in a lawn or landscape bed. They can even form a dense groundcover that will out-compete native or other vegetation. Once you have determined that they must be controlled, how do you do that? We’ll cover the basics here.
Biological Control in Home Landscapes
I love just about every part of the summer except for the bugs. Flies and mosquitos are my least favorite. However, in the garden, there are several critters I could do without, such as tomato hornworm, aphids, and squash bugs, to name a few. Nevertheless, these insects have their place in an ecosystem and are someone else's food! How do we get the good predatory insects to control those pesky problematic pests? It takes going back to essential integrated pest management.
University of Illinois Plant Clinic 2022
Plant Clinic services include plant and insect identification, diagnosis of disease, insect, weed, and chemical injury problems (chemical injury on field crops only), nematode assays, and help with nutrient related problems, as well as recommendations involving these diagnoses. Microscopic examinations, laboratory culturing, virus assays, and nematode assays are some of the techniques used at the Plant Clinic. Sample turnaround times vary depending on the type and condition of the sample, service(s) requested, and time of year submitted. We are currently operating with reduced staff but we are doing our best to continue to diagnose samples in a timely manner. Should culturing be necessary, isolates may not be ready to make a final identification for 10-14 days. Nematode processing may also require a few days to a few weeks depending on the procedure. Final reports include identification and diagnoses, along with management recommendations for treatment of the pest or pathogen problem.