Pesticide Avoidance 101

Unless you grow all your own food, it's wise to focus on the groceries if you don't want to ingest pesticides. But it would be unwise to stop there. Acre for acre, homeowners use more pesticide on their lawns and flowerbeds than farmers use on their fields, according to EPA statistics compiled by Beyondpesticides.org. Those pesticides come indoors on shoes, through the air (often attached to tiny particles of dust), on Fido and Fluffy's fur and in that bouquet of home-grown flowers kept perfect with poisonous sprays. The amount of this stuff that gets into food is trivial, but the amount that gets into you -- and your kids -- is something worth thinking about.

Doing the Low-Pesticide Two-step
Step 1: Grow healthy plants. It is with plants as it is with people: preventing ill-health works better and costs less than trying to cure problems after they arise. Ways to do it: * Choose an organic lawn-care company; healthy grass is key to their success. * Try not to plant more than you can care for hands-on and personal. * Improve your soil with compost and other organic matter; a healthy environment helps promote healthy plants. * Be sparing with quick-acting fertilizers high in nitrogen (the first of the three numbers on the label). Nitrogen promotes lush, tender growth that looks as beautiful to bugs and diseases as it does to you. * If you live in a humid climate be sure to keep plants well apart so air can circulate. Fungus diseases love crowded conditions. * Choose plants that do well in your region. Delphiniums need cool weather to thrive. Where it's hot they get diseases and flop and generally pine. If you're out of the delphinium zone, take pride in your camellias. Step Two: Practice IPM Ways to do it: * Make keeping an eye on your lawn and garden part of your regular routine. The more you know about how things look when everything is going fine, the more quickly you'll be able to spot trouble and stop it before it gets worse. * If a problem arises find out what's causing it, so you can solve it effectively with something relatively benign. The image-laden Gardening Resources Site hosted by Cornell University makes this much easier than it sounds (Although Cornell is in the northeast, a great many common garden problems have no regional loyalty.) * Beware of “all-purpose” treatments. Using something that contains insecticide when all you have is a disease problem is overkill in the most literal sense. * Choose your weapons carefully. Most pesticide labels have as much fine print as health insurance policies, but it pays to read the whole thing. If you disobey any of the instructions, all bets are off in the “we say this is safe to use” department, and that goes for the EPA as well as the manufacturer. * Learn to recognize beneficials. Bad bugs have many natural enemies that should be welcomed, not banished. Would you squish these? I hope not. They're juvenile ladybugs and like most teenagers they eat a LOT – of aphids, whiteflies and other pests. Writer Leslie Land blogs about gardening, food and design at Leslieland.com.