INSECT CONTROL
There are over 90,000 species of identified insects in the United States. The vast majority of them are not harmful to trees and shrubs. Some insect species are actually very beneficial to our ecosystem and care must be taken to not interfere with their life cycles or populations. Some, however, can be very damaging to trees and shrubs and can decrease the health of a plant or even kill it outright. At Ulrich Tree Care, we are knowledgeable about trees and the damaging insects that can adversely affect them. We custom tailor insect control programs to target the damaging insects at their most vulnerable stages while taking care not to interfere with the myriad of beneficial insects that share the same environment.
Insect damage can be categorized in three main categories:
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Chewing
Insects use their mouthparts to chew sections of a tree leaf or twig for food. The main damage these pests do is eat leafy material which reduces the plant’s ability to photosynthesize and produce food for itself.
Most plants can withstand infrequent mild infestations of chewing insects, but repeated annual damage will weaken the tree to the point where it becomes susceptible to a more lethal insect. Examples of Chewing insects are Caterpillars, Bagworms, Webworms, Japanese Beetles, and Grasshoppers. -
Sucking
Insects use their probe-like mouthpart (called a proboscis) to insert into the plant part to suck the sap out of the vascular system of the plant. Heavily infested plants can become wilted, yellowed, deformed, and may eventually die.
Some insects inject toxic materials into the plant and some can transmit diseases via their mouthparts as they feed. Care must be taken when treating a plant for sucking insects because there are a number of beneficial insects that feed on sucking insects as their food source and the wrong control treatment will adversely affect the populations of these beneficial friends.
Also, some sucking insects insert their proboscis into the xylem of the plant and some feed in the phloem - which are different ‘pathways’ that a plant translocates nutrients and water from the root system to the leaves.
The correct pest treatment must be used to target the xylem or phloem in order to effectively control the infestation. At Ulrich Tree Care, we are familiar with both the beneficial insect populations and the method of feeding of the damaging insect so we can customize the treatment to be the most effective on the target pest without damaging the beneficial insect populations. Examples of Sucking insects are Aphids, Scale, Leafhoppers, Thrips, and Spider Mites (although mites are not technically “insects”). -
Boring
Insects can bore holes into wood, bark, stems, or leaves of a plant. They to feed on the materials they enter into while others bore to live in or to lay eggs. Boring insects can affect a plant in either their adult stage and/or larval stage.
These types of insects are hard to identify at first because they aren’t identified to the untrained eye and do most of their damage inside of the plant. As they settle in and begin feeding and breeding, they can create a population that will keep growing with each breeding cycle, causing damage to spread very rapidly. Some insects are attracted to plants that are already weakened by drought, disease, or some other environmental issue. That’s why maintaining plant health is an important leg of the pest control strategy (via proper watering, mulching, fertilizing, etc).
At Ulrich Tree Care, we are familiar with the common pests that are attracted to your particular plant and can customize a treatment plan to control the pest at its most vulnerable stage as well as keep your plant growing at its most optimal level in order to prevent unwanted attacks. Some examples of Boring insects are Beetles (Emerald Ash Borer, Longhorn, Bark, Powderpost, Pine Bark), Carpenter Ants, Carpenter Bee, Termites, and Weevils.
At Ulrich Tree Care, we continually educate ourselves on past, current, and possible future insect infestations that may attack the Tulsa urban forest.
With over three decades of Plant Health Care experience, we know what works, what doesn’t work, and what will be the best course of action for our clients to keep their plants in top shape. Don’t throw unknown chemicals at plants and hope something sticks. Call for a free estimate on how we can keep your plant life looking and performing their best!