Common-Sense Pest Control: Least-Toxic Solutions for Your Home, Garden, Pets and Community - Hardcover

Olkowski, William; Daar, Sheila

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0942391632 ISBN 13: 9780942391633

Publisher: Taunton Press, 1991

Synopsis

This resource gives homeowners hundreds of ways to control garden pests. Here are remedies for ridding lawns, gardens, and trees of destructive invaders.

About this title

About the Author

Dr. William Olkowski, Sheila Daar, and Helga Olkowski each have over 40 years’ experience designing least-toxic management programs against invertebrate, microbial and vertebrate pests, in a wide range of urban and rural settings. They are founders of the Bio-Integral Resource Center (BIRC) in Berkeley, California, publisher two international periodicals on environmentally sound pest control: The IPM Practitioner and Common Sense Pest Control Quarterly. Steven Ash, with 28 years of IPM experience, is the IPM consultant to the San Francisco Department of Environment, Marin County, and other award-winning IPM Programs on the West Coast, and a member and IPM Instructor for Bay Friendly Landscaping.

Reviews

The authors of this impressive volume are founders of the Bio-Integral Resource Center in Berkeley, Calif., dedicated to nontoxic pest management. Throughout the book, their knowledge of environmentally friendly controls is richly evident. They begin by discussing basic plant, animal and insect names and information on management and natural pest controls--a section which, as they admit, readers may well want to skip, preferring to zero in on whatever particular pest they'd most like to stamp out. A thoroughgoing education follows: we learn nearly everything we'd ever want to know about pests and their control, ranging from indirect treatments to the physical (e.g., hand-removing Japanese beetles) and from the biological (releasing beneficial insects) to the chemical (insecticidal soap and baits). Pests of the home and greenhouse, the body, garden and the lawn are covered in unusual detail. (A section on pests in homes, for example, could serve as the basis for an annual homeowner's checkup.) The squeamish may not wallow in the lore of bugs so generously shared, but they'll marvel at the research that has fed the book--marvel enough, perhaps, to go back and read the introductory chapters.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Both this work and Bernice Lifton's Bug Busters: Poison-Free Controls for Your House & Garden ( LJ 3/15/91) promote pest prevention instead of crisis management and pesticide use. For the novice, Bug Busters is the more readable. It outlines basic facts and procedures without a great deal of detail, not even scientific names. More encyclopedic, Common Sense Pest Control is roughly three times longer, treats many more insect species in much more detail, sports more than four times the line drawings, and gives scientific names. Opening sections cover insect classification; the effects on pests of climate, weather, predators, pathogens, and parasites; basic concepts of integrated pest management; and chemical pest control agents (pesticides, organics, microbials, pheromones, growth regulators). Two appendixes list resources and suppliers.
-Annette Aiello, Smithsonian Tropical Research Inst., Panama
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Taunton Press
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0942391632
• ISBN 13: 9780942391633
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 736