Integrated Pest Management is the process of continually scouting for lawn and landscape related pests and injury.  Pests can be defined as a weed, disease, rodent or insect that can cause injury.  When managing the health of your lawn and landscape it is very important to understand the goals of Integrated Pest Management.  The two primary goals of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is to protect the environment and provide economical pest control up to the economic and aesthetic thresholds that you the property owner specifies.  It is very important to be able to identify what exactly a pest is, if the pest is susceptible (or non-susceptible) to control and if a pest is injurious to the desirable managed plant or not.  There are four primary control measures that are routinely used in IPM; Cultural, Mechanical, Biological and Chemical.  Cultural control involves growing the desired plant to be healthy through proper fertility, planting, plant selection (less susceptible plants), mulching and mowing.  Mechanical control is physically eliminating a pest by cultivating, pruning, hoeing and weed pulling, hand picking or burning and burying.  Biological control utilizes living organisms such as predators (lady beetles, spiders, insect-feeding birds), parasites (parasitic wasps, tachinid flies, etc.) and diseases (B.t. bacteria, Beauvaria fungus).  Lastly chemical control features the use of pesticides that are primarily quick, effective and short-term.  It is highly recommended to consider non-chemical methods first.  When applying pesticides you will need to consider any/all environmental impacts, proper timing and location of application.  Resistance can be experienced from continual use of same mode-of-action pesticide.  Please contact Pacocha Landscaping Services, Inc. for professional lawn related care in the greater Chicago and surrounding northwest suburban area.  Thank you for taking the time to read our blog and we look forward to being of service to you in the very near future!