Resources for making an IPM plan

 Marissa Schuh, IPM Extension Educator

With March behind us, plants are in greenhouses and the growing season is approaching.  Refresh yourself on tools for managing pests here.

Cucumber beetle is a pest to be prepared for. Photo: Gerald Holmes, Strawberry Center, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Bugwood.org

Building knowledge about pests

While the exact mix of problems we see varies each growing season, there are some problems we should be ready for every year. Some tools for learning about pests we regularly see in Minnesota include…

• Insect management for vegetable crops lists and links out to detailed pages on pests we see regularly in different Minnesota crop families

• Disease management for vegetable crops lists and links out to pages on vegetable disease by crop family

• Subscribe to our newsletter! If you’re reading this, you are likely already subscribed to the UMN Fruit and Vegetable News. We will be releasing weekly crop updates to help you get up to speed with whatever pest issues emerge in 2024.

Getting preventative measures in place
Now is the time of year we can take prevention measures for different pests. If you have pests you have struggled with in the past, brush up on them and see if there are preventative measures you can still implement, for example, rotation or netting to cover plants.

Diagnostic aids

Identifying plant problems during the growing season can be tricky.

• What’s wrong with my plant? allows you to focus on issues that cause the type of damage you are seeing in the plant you are growing. For example, if you see spots on your tomato plants, you can use this tool to pull up a list with pictures of things that commonly cause spots on tomato leaves, or fruit, or stem.

• There are apps that can help with weed ID, but they aren’t always accurate and shouldn’t be the only thing relied on for weed identification. 

Having thresholds at hand

If thresholds exist for a pest, they are typically listed on the UMN page about that pest. The Midwest Vegetable Production Guide also lists thresholds.

Getting pest control resources and tactics ready 

• Again, UMN pest pages will list management strategies for dealing with each pest.

• Another thing to bookmark is the online version of the Midwest Vegetable Production Guide (mwveguide.org). You can search the interactive database and quickly sort for products with short re-entry intervals, OMRI-listing, greenhouse use, and more.

• The Midwest Fruit Guide is available for free, you can download and print chapters on the fruit crops you grow for easier use.