Simple website for IPM?

I'm working on an article called "10 ways to make your home a healthier place to live" and one of the things I recommend is eliminating garden chemicals.

I would like to provide a link to basic information about integrated pest management, with a permaculture twist. Does anyone know of a good webpage to recommend?

I need one with a really basic starting point. The sites I've found assume the reader knows the general "why" and "how", but the audience for this article is probably not yet at that point.

Thanks!
Liz Schmidt

I'm not sure I understand your question....

Are you looking for a web page, website software or a location on someone else' site to post an article?

My go-to for that sort of task is Wikipedia.

Maybe our forum-goers could help spruce up that article (perhaps with a special focus on the intro paragraph and issues of tone in the "History" section), but an encyclopedia seems to be the sort of tone you're going for.

Looking that article over, I'm gratified that the concept of an acceptable level is listed first in the "principles" section, and a little surprised to learn that Nixon made IPM official US policy.

I'd also like to briefly mention that commercial insecticides often include wintergreen oil, which is an attractant to predatory insects. Officially, it's blended in so that humans aren't as bothered by the odor, but I wonder if chemical companies do it partly as a cheap way to eliminate more of their competition.

Jami McBride wrote:
I'm not sure I understand your question....Are you looking for a web page, website software or a location on someone else' site to post an article?

I am looking for a webpage that explains IPM because the article is just a list of short items and I don't have room to explain each in detail. The article will appear in my company's newsletter and subsequently on our website--I don't need someone else's site to post it on.

Liz

Joel Hollingsworth wrote:
My go-to for that sort of task is Wikipedia. Maybe our forum-goers could help spruce up that article (perhaps with a special focus on the intro paragraph and issues of tone in the "History" section), but an encyclopedia seems to be the sort of tone you're going for.

Thanks, Joel. I hadn't thought of Wikipedia. The article is at a good level for our readers, but like you alluded to, I don't like seeing Wiki's notes about the tone or style being inappropriate. I am a permaculture-newbie so I don't feel qualified to work on the article, but I'd sure like to see someone do that so those notes go away!

Also, I feel the page doesn't have a permaculture spin because it focuses so little on the things we do to prevent rampant infestations in the first place. Plus I'm not thrilled about some of the links at the bottom...like "Top Ten Reasons Why IPM Doesn't Work". I was thinking that IPM was compatible with permaculture, but now I'm not sure because there's so much emphasis on killing the beasts instead of prevention.

Any comments would be much appreciated...now I'm confused
Liz

I see Liz, so you are looking for some links to supplemental IPM information for your article -

You may have already seen this, but I'll post just in case:

http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/tipm.html

All the best with your article!

Thanks Jami. It seem so weird that the EPA has prevention as step #3, when they say it's "a first line of pest control".

So again I'm wondering if IPM is really congruent with permaculture...hmmmm...

Liz

Hi Liz,

My thoughts are that you will not really find IPM in relation to permaculture as permaculture does not see pests as pests exactly. Sure there are a lot of references to both and it seems maybe even classes as a part of a PDC but... Generally what you will find in permaculture as it relates to IPM is more of an all inclusive habitat building scenario where eventually through sheer diversity pests are no longer a problem species because in nature with diversity also comes balance.

Even though we may not understand what job the "pests" do (except killing our beloved plants); they are doing a job and serving a function. Generally when an infestation occurs it is to remove the sick or weak. Sometimes as all things in nature can do; the pests exploit a niche that causes them to boom, which if they are eating our crops can cause much irritation!

However I believe the permaculture practice would be to use observation to see why the pests are booming. Sometimes it turns out to be our fault; to many species to close together, to much nitrogen, not enough predators and often simply not enough habitat for everything to work properly. Not enough predators is too often overlooked, most IPM tries to interrupt the life cycles of the targeted pests with no thought to the fact that you are depriving the predators of their food also. This becomes a self defeating cycle as the pests adapt eventually but the predators often do not.

It goes back to the problem is the solution, if we knew why the pests were there we could then do something about it, often it can be hard for someone to see past the pests killing their hard work to better understand what is going on. Sometimes the easiest thing to do when all options are exhausted and understanding is still not coming is to simply remove the infested plant and try again with a different variety. In that case I suppose you could say the pests are telling us to try try again.  They might also be saying hey! look here that isn't going to work.

Jeff

I am reminded of this image from Paul's article "Organic Lawn Care For the Cheap and Lazy"



"The key to the lawn care game is competition. You want to make things favorable for the grass and unfavorable for the weeds so the grass will choke out the weeds. Naturally."

I think that is true for many "pest" issues.  You are trying to make things favorable for _____ and unfavorable for <pest> so the _____ will out-compete the <pest>.

i would try planting your crop of choice in several locations that have different conditions such as sun water, shade ,high spot, low spot until you have enough spread around that you can make observations as to
which spot did the best and let Nature show you the way.

other than that "companion planting" @ M.E.NEWS

i once read that a mono-culture is like everyone in a orchestra  having only one instrument blaring away where as inter-planting or companion planting is more like a symphony of instruments that doesn't attract one particular pest so strongly. The other plants give predatory insects a place to stay.