INTEGRATED pest management (IPM) is the term used to describe an overall balanced approach to plant pest control, rather than a ‘firefighting’ one. It involves a combination of all the various measures available to the gardener to control pests, and requires a planned and coordinated philosophy to the whole garden environment, rather than treating symptoms as they occur.
It starts with pre-empting problems with cultural measures, including selecting resistant cultivars and employing good hygiene and cultural practices. Pre-emptive moves include the use of traps and barriers to monitor or prevent the pest establishing on your plants or stopping it reaching plants.
An understanding of a pest’s life cycle is helpful, as each pest (particularly insects) has one stage of their life cycle
