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Photo Credit: Jodi Torpey

Remember, beneficial insects are our friends. If you must use insecticides, always follow label guidelines, spray at night when pollinators aren’t active, and use chemicals that are less toxic to bees.

No matter what’s bugging you in the garden, you’ve got a lot of choices when it comes to waging war on insect pests. While I rarely resort to chemical warfare, I’m glad I’ve got some pesticides in my arsenal to fall back on – I just don’t use them first. Instead, I take a more diplomatic approach called integrated pest management (IPM). This step-by-step strategy is a measured response that lets me pick my pest battles carefully.

What I like about IPM is its commonsense attitude that lets me choose the most environmentally-friendly weapons first. The goal is to make smarter biological, cultural and chemical choices to reduce pesky garden problems. Here’s a checklist of the seven IPM practices to get you started:

1. Know your pest threshold. Not every insect is a pest. In fact, out of the thousands of species of insects, only a few – about 10 percent – are real pests to gardeners. Many of the remaining 90 percent are either beneficial or harmless. So if insects are simply gnawing at your broccoli’s leaves but leaving the vegetable alone, you might not need to take any action. One gardener I know grows beautiful roses, and she doesn’t bother to spray for aphids – but she will take immediate action against pests like the rose midge, whose damage will keep her plants from blooming. She knows her pest limits.

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Photo Credit: Jodi Torpey

While these circular snippets made by native leaf cutter bees don’t look too great, they don’t harm the plant (and the bees put the leaf cuttings to good use to line the cells for their young).

2. Grow healthy plants. The best defense is a good offense in the garden. The healthier the plants, the fewer the pests. If you want to grow vigorous plants, use good cultural practices like selecting disease-resistant varieties, giving plants plenty of room to breathe and watering only when plants are thirsty. In the veggie garden, be sure to rotate crops annually and get rid of diseased plant materials quickly.