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Oct 09, 2023

Back to basics

Michael Wijesinghe is assistant head grower at Bell Nursery’s Springfield, Ohio location. He deals with several pests, depending on the crop. Some crops get mostly one key pest; others see a wide

Michael Wijesinghe is assistant head grower at Bell Nursery’s Springfield, Ohio location. He deals with several pests, depending on the crop. Some crops get mostly one key pest; others see a wide range of pests. For calibrachoa and petunia, for example, he sees thrips, aphids and mites.

Michael says the Bell Nursery team has been working to train all of its growers to understand basic integrated pest management (IPM) principles.

“Before we even think about chemicals, we’re going way back to the beginning with cultural practices, whether it’s sanitation, making sure our floors are clean, getting old plants out of the greenhouse and eliminating weeds that might be in our greenhouse.”

For dahlias that encounter thrips as a key pest, Bell Nursery has decided to trial biological options and that has worked quite well, Michael says. There is still the challenge of using biologicals on combo baskets that might have multiple pests. Because of the targeted nature of biological controls, that means conventional practices are necessary for the majority of production.

At Bell Nursery’s Springfield location, Michael says a systemic drench is the backbone of the pest control plan. He uses a lot of the products on the market, depending on the severity of pressure he’s seeing and the time of year. He also uses spray programs and monitors for pests by scouting. With yellow sticky cards set up through production ranges and by flipping over pots weekly, his team is able to determine how much pest pressure they are under.

“If pressure is low, like it’s February, life cycles are long, we’re not spraying very frequently, but as we start seeing temperatures rise and life cycles shortening, we start to decrease those intervals,” Michael says.

Michael says that Bell Nursery is trying to limit its use of chemicals while improving its inventory management. The goal is to control pests without overusing chemicals, which can lead to resistance. When they decide what products to keep and which to toss, they look at efficacy, phytoxicity and modes of action. As such, having a product on the shelf that they know can control multiple pests while being efficient on all of their plants is a huge win. For Michael, that means Mavrik® Aquaflow Insecticide/Miticide and Enstar® AQ Insect Growth Regulator are sticking around in his toolbox.

“We like them because they’re effective on basically anything we’ve sprayed them on,” he says. “We haven’t seen any phytotoxicity. And they’re also really nice because they do have broad spectrum control.”

He knows Mavrik® Aquaflow and Enstar® AQ are effective because even beyond the trials that happen before a chemical even reaches growers, he’s trialed them himself in a variety of environmental conditions.

Enstar® AQ has been very helpful as Bell has ramped up its biological control program. Bell’s Celosia crop had spider mite issues last year, so in 2023 Michael used biologicals to treat it for broad mites, spider mites and thrips. The predatory mites worked perfectly on those pests, but then he started to see aphids, a pest he hadn’t expected.

“We don’t want to kill off our beneficial mites, but we’re able to come in with Enstar, which is very effective with biologicals, and clean up the aphids,” Michael says.

Mavrik® has longer residual control than some other conventional chemistries, which gives Bell Nursery improved efficacy. Michael says you typically need to be very diligent when working with inexperienced growers to ensure they know they can’t apply certain chemicals to certain plants. This is where the lack of phytotoxicity with Enstar® AQ and Mavrik® is a benefit.

Enstar® AQ has a 4-hour re-entry interval and no need for respiratory protection. As part of Bell Nursery’s responsible use of chemicals, Michael always consults the manufacturer’s label for recommendations on spray intervals, and the amount of consecutive sprays that can be done before rotating. When building a spray program, he makes sure to use at least three modes of action during the course of the rotation.

“Hopefully by the time we get to the first product again, we’ve already knocked out whatever pest that might be resistant to that product,” he says.

Michael says Enstar® AQ works really well in a rotation because it’s part of a smaller class of chemicals. He’s had success using it in propagation as a rotational partner for fungus gnat control. The four-hour REI is particularly helpful here because he applies Enstar as a drench in sections knowing that workers will be able to stick cuttings in those areas shortly afterwards.

Enstar and Mavrik Aquaflow are registered trademarks of Wellmark International. ©2023 Wellmark International.

For more: www.bellnursery.com

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