Blog article by Ann Short, UC Master Gardener
Well, I’ve never been a blogger, but from time to time I feel like there’s something I just need to put out there. Spring is hard on the heels of our wet and soggy winter, and while I was out puttering about in my garden yesterday morning, I was super concerned to smell a drifting pest control overspray wafting over from a neighbor's yard. I asked the operator what was being used. He said, “Well, it’s just for mosquitoes and spiders, “ and he told me the brand name…like a good MG Gardener, I looked it up…Lots of fine print later, not being a chemist, or knowing what all the scientific words implied… I could read very clearly “ will kill all bees” and probably won’t be effective on the other pests after a couple of seasons.” Aaugh! What the heck?!
Our class has just finished the integrated pest management session! What I gleaned from that lesson ( I may be simplifying this, so please forgive me) was that the less pesticide used, the better, because the good bugs are there to kill the bad bugs.
OK, so I really like my neighbor, who is not a gardener. What to do? Will I offend if I go over and say, "Please stop the spraying right away, because it’s going to be killing the bees that I need in my pollinator garden?" Should I offer to come over and check out the garden for bugs? What bugs are bothersome? There’s no standing water that I can tell for mosquito larvae, and we all have spiders. My thought is that I should just ask not to spray during the growing season.
That’s all on my little mind this morning.