Integrated Pest Management
( IPM ) Timing Chart

Tired of bugs chewing your vegetables or wilting your flowers?
This easy-to-follow guide helps you identify common garden pests, know when they appear in your growing zone and choose safe, natural ways to manage them.
This guide was written with senior gardeners in mind: clear, practical advice that works in real gardens across Zones 3 to 9.


What IPM Involves:

  1. Monitoring: Regularly checking plants for pest presence and damage.
  2. Identification: Correctly identifying pests to know if they’re harmful or beneficial.
  3. Prevention: Using cultural practices like crop rotation, selecting pest-resistant plants, and maintaining healthy soil to prevent pest outbreaks.
  4. Control Methods: Using the least harmful methods first, such as:
    • Mechanical controls (handpicking, traps)
    • Biological controls (introducing natural predators like ladybugs or nematodes)
    • Chemical controls (only as a last resort, and using targeted, safer pesticides)
    • Thresholds: Acting only when pest populations reach a level that could cause economic or significant damage (economic threshold).

Benefits of IPM:

Reduces pesticide use and resistance
Protects beneficial insects (pollinators, predators)
Improves garden biodiversity and health
Safer for humans, pets and the environment

Examples in the garden:

Using row covers to exclude pests
Encouraging predatory insects by planting companion plants
Hand-removing caterpillars or beetles
Applying neem oil or insecticidal soap instead of harsh pesticides
Do you want tips on how to apply IPM in your garden, or maybe how to identify specific pests and natural enemies?

IPM in the Garden

🪲 Aphids:

  1. When they arrive: Early spring to late summer
  2. Zones: 3-9
  3. Crops affected: Leafy greens, peas, beans, brassicas, roses
  4. Damage: Leaves curl or yellow, sticky sap (honeydew), can cause black sooty mold
  5. Helpful insects: Ladybugs, lacewings, hoverflies
  6. Organic controls:
    • Spray plants with a strong jet of water
    • Use insecticidal soap or neem oil
    • Encourage ladybugs and lacewings in the garden
    • Avoid over-fertilizing with nitrogen

Colorado Potato Beetle

  1. When they arrive: Late spring to summer
  2. Zones: 3-9
  3. Crops affected: Potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers
  4. Damage: Strips leaves from plants, especially potatoes
  5. Helpful insects: Ground beetles, spined soldier bugs
  6. Organic controls:
    • Handpick beetles and orange eggs from leaves
    • Use floating row covers early in the season
    • Rotate crops to reduce overwintering populations
    • Apply Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) or spinosad for larvae

Cabbage Loopers

  1. When they arrive: Summer (often more than one generation)
  2. Zones: 3-9
  3. Crops affected: Cabbage, kale, broccoli, collards, other brassicas
  4. Damage: Holes in leaves, caterpillars often hide under leaves
  5. Helpful insects: Parasitic wasps (Trichogramma, braconid wasps)
  6. Organic controls:
    • Handpick loopers off plants
    • Cover crops with row covers
    • Spray Bt (safe for people and pets)
    • Attract parasitic wasps and predatory insects

Cutworms

  1. When they arrive: Early spring
  2. Zones: 3-9
  3. Crops affected: Seedlings of many vegetables (tomatoes, beans, lettuce, etc.)
  4. Damage: Cut seedlings off at soil level, often overnight
  5. Helpful insects: Ground beetles, tachinid flies
  6. Organic controls:
    • Use cardboard collars around seedlings
    • Till soil before planting to disturb larvae
    • Sprinkle diatomaceous earth around stems
    • Encourage ground beetles in the garden

Squash Vine Borer

  1. When they arrive: Early to mid-summer
  2. Zones: 4-9
  3. Crops affected: Squash, zucchini, pumpkins
  4. Damage: Larvae bore into stems, causing wilting and collapse
  5. Helpful insects: Parasitic wasps
  6. Organic controls:
    • Wrap the base of stems with foil or cloth to block entry
    • Check for sawdust-like frass and slit stems to remove larvae
    • Use traps to catch moths in early summer
    • Choose resistant varieties or plant early

Spider Mites

  1. When they arrive: Mid to late summer (hot and dry weather)
  2. Zones: 3-9
  3. Crops affected: Beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, houseplants, ornamentals
  4. Damage: Speckled or yellowing leaves, webbing, leaf drop
  5. Helpful insects: Predatory mites, ladybugs
  6. Organic controls:
    • Increase humidity around plants (mist regularly)
    • pray with water to wash off mites
    • Use insecticidal soap or neem oil
    • Avoid using harsh insecticides that kill natural predators

Slugs & Snails

  1. When they arrive: Cool, wet weather in spring and fall
  2. Zones: 3-9
  3. Crops : Leafy greens, strawberries, hostas
  4. Damage: Holes in leaves and fruit, slime trails
  5. Helpful wildlife: Ground beetles, toads, birds
  6. Organic controls:
    • Handpick in the evening or early morning
    • Use yeast traps or copper tape as barriers
    • Remove mulch/debris near plants
    • Create habitat for toads and beetles

Japanese Beetles

  1. When they arrive: Mid-summer (July to August)
  2. Zones: 4-9
  3. Crops affected: Beans, roses, grapes, fruit trees, ornamentals
  4. Damage: Skeletonized leaves, swarms of beetles
  5. Helpful insects: Tachinid flies, beneficial nematodes (for grubs)
  6. Organic controls:
    • Handpick into soapy water early in the day
    • Use neem oil spray to deter feeding
    • Plant trap crops (like geraniums) away from your garden
    • Apply milky spore to your lawn to kill grubs over time

Other Gardening Content:

Know your Garden Naturally || What's your Weeds Telling You?
Gardening Tools to print and Download || Companion Planting Chart
Bad Bugs in the Garden


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