Rethinking Pest Management With Eco-Friendly Solutions For Your Home and Garden

In the early 90s, I worked for landscape contractors who practiced eco-friendly pest management solutions. This holistic approach to managing gardens with the entire ecosystem’s health in mind made sense to me. Years later when I started working as a garden center manager, I learned that the techniques I was taught weren’t the norm (nor are they mainstream knowledge). 

Imagine my shock and confusion when I heard they weren’t interested in understanding the root of their pest problems or the unintended consequences of their actions. Especially after working closely with many knowledgeable nursery professionals.

They didn’t care to learn about the pest, the affected plant, its environment, or the care practices the gardener provided. It was as if they applied chemicals on autopilot. I decided that I wouldn’t follow that path. Because when you know better, you do better… and I knew better. 

It’s possible to avoid pesticides, even if you’re dealing with pests. Focus on building a healthy garden ecology, inviting garden allies (AKA beneficial insects), and looking at pest management through the lens of protecting these organisms. The reality is that pesticides are rarely, if ever, needed. 

What is a Pest?

According to UCIPM, a pest can be a plant, vertebrate, invertebrate, nematode, pathogen that causes disease, and other unwanted organisms that may harm water quality, animal life, or other parts of the ecosystem like our home and garden.

My definition? A pest is a living organism that causes damage. But they aren’t the only thing that can cause damage. Abiotic factors – physical conditions – can do this as well like:

  • Fire damage

  • Water (too much or not enough)

  • Wind

  • Heat

  • Humidity

  • Cold

  • Nutrient deficiencies

  • pH-related issues

  • Excess soil salinity

  • Improper use of pesticides

  • Compacted soil

  • Pollution (air or water)

Some pests are seasonal and to be expected, like ants marching their way into the kitchen or aphids showing up each spring on the roses. When you learn the cycles, you can better prepare for them. 

Since this blog is about eco-friendly pest management solutions, let’s dig into a popular approach in the gardening world and its benefits.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM)

Integrated pest management is a decision-making process that looks at the home and garden as a whole system. This approach uses science-based strategies to manage pests by digging into the problem, why it’s happening, whether the environment plays a role, and offering eco-friendly solutions to tackle problems from the ground up. 

In IPM, we don’t react when we see a problem. We first seek to understand why it’s happening. 

The root of IPM is planting the right plant in the right place, amending the soil with compost, feeding with organic fertilizers, and watering to grow a deep, broad zone so it’s set up to succeed. This requires you to understand the network of how a garden grows and have knowledge of organic gardening techniques that support this system.

For example, I plant sweet alyssum near my roses. The syrphid or hover fly – an important pollinator – loves the nectar from sweet alyssum. When she sees a population of aphids on a neighboring rose, she’s likely to lay her eggs among that aphid population. Within a few days, the larvae emerge, ready to devour the aphids. No need to use a pesticide of any kind!

A major benefit of IPM is that this approach makes your plants more resilient to seasonal pests, unexpected weather events, and other stressors. It also increases your threshold of tolerance! 

I often ask program attendees to consider how much damage to their plant they can allow versus what the plant can put up with. Often, the latter is more than the former.

Just because you see an insect on a leaf next to bits of that leaf chewed off doesn’t mean that insect did the damage and should be removed. Proper identification is important! Snails, earwigs, beetles, caterpillars, bees, and birds can all create chew marks on leaves. But most of those animals are beneficial to your garden if properly managed!

The question goes from “What is the problem at hand?” to “Why is this happening and can I live with it?”

The truth is, it’s rare that a pesticide is needed. IPM is my preferred approach because it exhausts every effort before reaching for an eco-friendly or non-toxic option. That’s because the environmental impacts of traditional pest control methods are numerous and devastating devastating. 

The Environmental Impact of Traditional Pest Control 

I’ll admit, I wasn’t aware of organic pest solutions until I worked with those landscape contractors back in the 90s. I knew that people lived alternative lifestyles – I was born and raised in Berkeley during the 70s, after all. But I don’t recall understanding the term organic until I became a gardener. 

Back then, my parents used chemical pesticides and fertilizers. I can still smell the pungent odor of the flea fogger I turned on as I left my house to go to grandma’s for the day at 11 years old. But just 3 short years later, my holistic journey began thanks to Caritas Creek summer camp. 

After 3 summers of attending the camp tucked deep into the Mendocino Woodlands, I signed up for a hike to the old-growth Redwood forest. I was in awe at the sight of these ancient giants. I hiked to the Redwoods again the following summer at camp, but it wasn’t the same. As our group came around the last bend of the trail, we gasped in disbelief.

Each and every Redwood was cut to the base. Gone, empty, lifeless, and sorrowful. Many of us wept. 

This experience altered me. Especially when I learned that Georgia Pacific – the company name printed on the outer sleeve of toilet paper at my elementary school and the tissue paper I blew my nose with – was responsible for clearcutting those ancient giants.

This is when I began to learn about consumerism. Who is selling us what and where is it coming from? Is it safe (for the environment, for us)? This taught me an important lesson: Just because a chemical is sold in stores, doesn’t mean it’s safe. 

Modern Pest Management

Certain ingredients in popular pesticides sold today have a large, negative environmental impact. 

The main culprit? Synthetic pesticides.

Many pesticides are designed to be durable. That quality allows them to persist in the environment and water, negatively impacting watershed ecosystems. 

Here are a few helpful resources: OWOW, UCIPM, NIH, and Pyrethroids.

Water quality agencies have it out for this synthetic chemical. And for good reason! 

Pyrethroids are a widely available synthetic pesticide that is highly toxic to our waterways, killing water insects, crustaceans, fish, and other organisms at the bottom of the food chain. 

Products containing pyrethroids have active ingredient names typically ending in “-thrin.” This includes permethrin, bifenthrin, cyfluthrin, beta-cyfluthrin, cypermethrin, deltamethrin, lambda-cyhalothrin, and tralomethrin. 

Neonicotinoids are another big problem. They proliferated in the market in the 1990s – back when I worked for the landscape contractors – and have contaminated watersheds ever since.

Neonicotinoids (neonics for short) like Imidacloprid, Acetamiprid, Clothianidin, Dinotefuran, and Thiamethoxam are widely used systemic pesticides. They enter the plant’s tissue, move through its vascular system, and remain in the plant, working for several weeks, months, or longer. 

Neonics also move beyond the areas of application, remaining in the soil and water when they flow off-site. Due to the pesticides’ ability to remain in plant tissue, the soil, and our waterways, it inadvertently kills bees, beneficial insects, and non-targeted organisms well beyond the area applied. 

Using these pesticides isn’t the solution, so what is?

How to Build Resilience as a Gardener

If you baby your plants, fuss over your flowers, and remove every imperfection you spot then you’re not alone. But there’s a better way to grow a bountiful garden! 

Plants adapt to their environment, as do people. You might want control over everything – to grow the perfect dahlia, have a flawless lawn, and make it look perfect – but gardens don’t operate this way. 

Here’s my advice: Allow your garden to get a little messy. 

Let those leaves lie and allow some flowering plants to complete their life cycle. Leaves offer security for beneficial insects, dying plants provide nutrient-rich seeds for songbirds, and fluff from the Japanese Anemones or Clematis is used as nesting material. 

Even eco-friendly pesticides such as neem kill beneficial organisms, though they don’t have the same harmful effects on the environment. It also breaks an important cycle your garden needs to thrive. 

I know it’s tempting to react to problems, but a bountiful ecosystem doesn’t come from attacking every insect that enters your garden walls. It comes from building your resilience as a gardener. Trust that in releasing control, you are nurturing a healthy ecosystem. 

The Integrated Pest Management Process

Successful IPM implementation requires you to think about the ecosystem beyond your garden at every phase of the 5-step process:

  1. Inspection

  2. Identification

  3. Evaluation

  4. Action steps

  5. Monitoring

Don’t panic when pests arrive! This is an opportunity to get curious, do a close inspection to identify the pest, and ask “Is this a seasonal pest to be expected?” or “Is this a pest brought on by stresses to the plant?” or “Is this a newly introduced invasive species?” Once the situation has been properly evaluated, it’s about finding techniques to use that can reduce or eliminate the pest without pesticides. 

If a pesticide is needed, IPM focuses on discernment – what pesticide will do the job and be the safest for other organisms and air, soil, and water quality? It’s also very specific about the application and timing of that pesticide, only targeting the pest with a spot spray. 

Pesticides should not be considered the first line of defense. Pesticides are very good at killing pests, but it doesn’t solve the root of the problem. So what eco-friendly pest management solutions can you use to address the cause? Let’s dig in.

Eco-Friendly Pest Management Solutions

IPM looks at eco-friendly ways to prevent pest problems and then provides intentional action steps to take when they do intrude. 

Action Steps 

Part of taking action is preventing problems to begin with. How do you decide the proper action or control to use? If you can utilize a tool or a method with no unintended consequences to solve or prevent that pest problem in the future, that’s the one to go with.

Here are 5 types of controls to choose from in IPM:

  1. Cultural controls bolster the health of the garden to make it resilient.

  2. Mechanical/physical controls manage pests with tools like traps and barriers.

  3. Biological controls invite living organisms like beneficial insects to support the ecosystem.

  4. Shovel control permits you to remove plants that don’t work for you or show constant signs of stress and pest problems.

  5. Chemical controls are a last-resort option once we’ve exercised all the other controls. 

For Your Home

It’s much easier to decide what controls to use in the home than in the garden because you have much more power in this environment than outside in nature.

Here’s what an integrated pest management approach can look like when addressing pests in your home: 

  • Placing screens on your windows and doors to stop flying insects from coming in.

  • Adding weather stripping to your doors and windows to prevent crawling insects from entering.

  • Using a door sweep to halt crawling insects in their tracks.

  • Sealing up cracks and crevices to prevent ants and other critters from making your house a home. 

  • Placing ¼ inch hardware cloth behind foundation vents to keep rodents at bay.

  • Placing ⅛ inch hardware cloth behind attic vents to prevent wasps from coming inside.

  • Covering eaves with metal flashing to stop carpenter bees from nesting in the wood.

  • Keeping organic material, such as soil or mulch, away from the foundation to prevent insect activity at the base of the house.

  • Using ant bait stations rather than sprays to protect the surrounding environment.

And if you ever use ant bait stations outside your home, protect it from unintended visitors by covering it with a secured milk crate or a small exclusion basket. Ant bait stations have a sugar attractant that is enticing to ants but also to wildlife and pets. Keep it covered so untargeted animals stay safe from harm.

For Your Garden

When it comes to pests in your garden, there are even more possible non-toxic solutions within IPM to choose from.

The fundamentals I teach and consult on include:

  • Planting the right plant in the right place.

  • Planting properly.

  • Amending the soil with compost.

  • Feeding organically.

  • Leaving the leaves in the fall when you can to protect beneficial insects

  • Protecting the soil with mulch.

  • Leaving some areas bare and uncultivated to support native ground-dwelling bees.

  • Irrigating plants to encourage deep root growth.

  • Understanding the plant's needs once it is established.

  • Excluding critters from food sources with fencing and netting.

  • Protecting root zones by using gopher wire to prevent gophers from eating your plants.

  • Utilizing exclusion frames to prevent rodents or birds from eating your food crops.

  • Getting a little messy is a good thing.

Protect Our Ecosystems with Non-Toxic Pest Control Options

IPM isn’t just about nurturing a healthy home and garden. It’s about taking a step back to observe the system as a whole. It’s also about understanding how everything within that environment plays a role in that ecosystem’s health. 

After over 25 years in the gardening world, one thing is very clear to me: Everything is connected. 

We have the option, as consumers, to make choices about our homes and gardens that nurture a safe, sustainable environment. However, the choices feel confusing because advertising makes it that way. 

My knowledge is the bridge between gardeners like you and these companies making false promises that negatively affect our health and the health of our homes, gardens, and waterways.

Everyone deserves a bountiful garden, but even more than that, we all deserve clean drinking water, clean air, and healthy soil. This is all impacted by the decisions we make – how much we use our car vs alternative means of transportation (if possible), the clothes we buy made from synthetic materials, the cleaning products we use, and even how and where we dispose of our trash.

When we eliminate the use of pesticides and find eco-friendly solutions for our problems, we can grow sustainably driven, healthy environments. A much better option than eliminating pests with toxic chemicals that affect us later down the line.

Ways We Can Grow Together

Want to make decisions for your home or garden that are a little less toxic and a lot more eco-friendly? I can help.

Attend an online educational presentation

Book in-person garden coaching

Suzanne Bontempo