Integrated Pest and Disease Control and Overwintering Management for Garden Flowers and Edible Fungi

China's landscaping and greening efforts are flourishing, which has driven improvements in research on garden flower pests and diseases and their control techniques. When winter arrives, most flower pests and diseases enter an overwintering (or dormant) state in various ways. During this period, pests and diseases are basically inactive, making it an excellent season for control.

I. Strengthen Cultivation Management

1. Reasonable cultivation according to habits

Strengthening cultivation management improves the ability of garden flowers themselves to resist pests and diseases. Some flowers prefer a dry environment; if planted in a damp place, they grow poorly and are prone to pests and diseases. Conversely, flowers that prefer moisture, when planted in a dry place, also suffer from pests and diseases. Therefore, flowers should be planted in locations with suitable dryness, moisture, and pH according to their habits, so that they grow well. Apply fertilizer reasonably, add appropriate amounts of trace element fertilizers, and avoid over-applying nitrogen fertilizer, which easily causes excessive vegetative growth of branches and leaves; the tender shoot tips easily become food for pests such as aphids and swallowtail butterflies. If fertilizer is applied reasonably, flowers grow vigorously, and the damage caused by these pests will be greatly reduced.

2. Reasonable crop rotation

Since pathogenic organisms and pests of flowers mostly overwinter parasitically in dead branches and shallow surface soil, growing the same flower species on a piece of land for a long time provides ideal habitat and hosts for the overwintering of pathogenic organisms and pests. Long-term planting of the same flower species on a piece of land also destroys the soil's physical and chemical structure, leading to decreased fertility and reduced cultivability; thus flowers grow weak, which further causes rampant pests and diseases. Reasonable crop rotation, however, can improve soil structure, increase fertility, enhance flower growth, and make it difficult for pathogenic organisms and pests to find suitable hosts, naturally keeping pest and disease control in check. People usually immediately associate pest control with pesticides. In fact, pesticide control is fast-acting and effective to a certain extent, but it pollutes the environment and has many drawbacks. First, pesticide control often misses the stage when pests are weakest in resistance, and spray application uses large amounts with excessively large droplets, resulting in poor efficacy. Second, commonly used pesticides are mostly broad-spectrum insecticides; frequent use easily causes pests to develop resistance, so doses must be increased to be effective, which causes waste and, more importantly, pollutes the environment, especially by killing large numbers of useful natural enemies such as beneficial insects, disrupting the ecology and causing certain pests to become even more rampant. Third, the residues and dynamic migration of pesticides in soil, crops, aquatic organisms, and livestock and poultry seriously pollute the environment and even endanger residents' lives. Historically, pesticides such as DDT and BHC (hexachlorocyclohexane) left us profound lessons. Therefore, to protect the environment, chemical control should be minimized or avoided, and other pollution-free control methods should be vigorously developed, such as biological control and reasonable crop rotation. Prevention is more important than treatment; eliminating the environment in which pests and diseases occur and taking preventive measures can avoid the drawbacks brought by chemicals, protect the environment, save manpower and financial resources, and be more conducive to healthy flower growth.

3. Selecting excellent varieties with strong resistance from the perspective of introduction and genetic breeding

Using techniques and new methods such as sexual hybridization, artificial mutation, and bioengineering to create genetic variation, provide more original breeding materials, enhance variety resistance, and fundamentally reduce the occurrence of pests and diseases. Breeding of palm ornamental trees for resistance to lethal yellowing in Florida, USA, and breeding of roses for cold resistance and disease resistance in Denmark and Canada have all achieved remarkable results. When introducing species, consider both the landscape and the resistance of the flowers.

II. Protect and Introduce Natural Enemies to Effectively Control Pest Numbers

There are many types of natural enemies of pests, such as ladybugs, lacewings, parasitic wasps, and many birds, which play a role in controlling pest damage. In addition to protecting natural enemies of pests, they can also be collected and introduced from fields and suburban woodlands. Large-scale nurseries can also rear them artificially for mass propagation. In some places, due to excessive pesticide application, although some pests were killed, more natural enemies of pests were also killed. Some people have weak environmental awareness and shoot birds or take their nests. All of this leaves beneficial natural enemy insects and natural enemy birds without a good environment to live in, disrupts the ecological balance of nature, and leads to harmful consequences that occur from time to time; the lessons are profound.

III. Ecological Management

In the management of garden flower pests and diseases, trees, shrubs, vines, herbaceous plants, ground covers, and lawns from different families and genera are systematically arranged and selected in a community. This can improve the virtuous cycle of the ecological garden system, beautify the cityscape, and protect the environment; it can also maintain the relative ecological balance of pest and disease communities in the ecological garden community, thereby achieving the goal of controlling pest and disease damage. This is the theoretical basis for realizing garden flower pest and disease management based on the ecological garden system. Treating flower pest and disease management as an important measure for improving ecological gardens, that is, establishing "ecological management," is the best strategy for exploring garden flower pest and disease management, and is also the "biological control" unique to the biological community of gardens.

IV. Overwintering Management Methods

1. Pruning

Before winter arrives, clear away diseased and dead branches to reduce overwintering eggs. For example, eggs on flowering trees and shrubs such as yellow-flowered rhodotypos (Kerria japonica) and roses.

2. Deep plowing

Strengthen tillage, deeply plow the land, and expose it to the sun for several days to destroy the overwintering environment of pathogenic organisms and pests. Because specific pests and diseases basically attack specific flowers. Winter plowing and deep turning can also cause mechanical damage to the larvae, pupae, and eggs of underground pests lurking in the soil, such as white grubs and cutworms, and after being exposed on the surface, they can be pecked and eaten by birds and other natural enemies, effectively controlling the occurrence of pests and diseases.

3. Whitewashing for protection

Whitewashing the trunks and branches of woody garden flowers can not only effectively prevent freezing damage and sunscald in winter and improve the disease resistance of flowering trees and shrubs, but also destroy the overwintering sites of pests and diseases, playing the dual role of both freeze prevention and insect killing. It is especially effective against mites and scale insects that overwinter in the bark.

Integrated pest and disease control for garden flowers requires long-term effort to create a virtuous-cycle environment. When pests and diseases make it necessary to use chemical control, it is necessary to both control pests and protect natural enemies, while also avoiding environmental pollution. Minimize the number of pesticide applications and choose, as much as possible, pesticides that are targeted at pests but do not kill natural enemies, such as petroleum emulsion and bitter ginseng water. Improve pesticide application methods, such as ring trunk painting and injection, avoid unreasonable fire-hose-style application, reduce pollution, save manpower and material resources, and enhance efficacy. Only in this way can we, while using garden flowers to create a beautiful and comfortable environment, avoid polluting the environment through garden flower pest and disease control.