Meet Michelle Opela , IPM Manager for Costa Farms North Carolina deftness , inher late consultation .
Michelle , what do you do at Costa Farms?My team and I manage all of the pesterer ( bugs and disease ) on the farm using primarily biological control methods . We utilize good hemipteron / fungi / bacteria to fight back the bad bugs / bacteria / fungi .
Can you give us a firm verbal description of what IPM is?IPM stands for Integrated Pest Management and is basically the combine use of several methods to control pests ; Chemical , Biological , and Physical .
Why does Costa Farms use IPM?IPM is a sustainable approach to horticulture . The traditional approaching of using preponderantly chemicals for everything can lead to resistance issues , which , in turn , makes everyone ’s life more unmanageable . Here ’s why : Once a pest develops electric resistance and a chemistry loses effectivity you may back yourself into a corner if you do n’t have a program B , design C , etc … Not to advert any environmental impact this may have on the environment .
By using IPM we are able-bodied to get a destiny more selective with which chemistries we use skimpy on the other two methods . It is incredibly complex and one day , removing and cast away infected plants may be the good choice , but other days it may be more lucid to go in with a biological . It is exciting because this area is presently uprise at such a rapid amphetamine who knows what other options we will have in the next decade !
What ’s the favorite part of your job?Getting to see the beneficials in military action killing pest ! badly , it never catch onetime . It ’s like a little gladiator battle depart on out there a couple thousand times per day .
Have you always loved insects?In fact I have ! Growing up I would spend time of day everyday outside see and hoard bugs . I would fill up mason jars with bugs and leaf ( because in my mind , every bug ate the same leaf ) . Of course , none of these hemipterous insect make it and my poor mum would cleanse them up and have mason jars constantly ready for my torture , I stand for scientific discipline . That is how I got the nickname that my family still calls me today : “ Bug . ”
What ’s your favourite beneficial insect?Cryptolaemus aka Mealybug Destroyer . The name really say it all on this one . But aside from being everybody ’s hero ( because mealybugs are the bad and they seem to be everywhere the right way now ) , these guy have some really unique evolutionary crotchet . Cryptolaemus have been knight by some as the “ wolf in sheep ’s skin ” because when they are larvae they resemble their quarry . That ’s right – they mimic mealybugs ! This is important because aphids secrete honeydew ( essentially sugar poo ) which attract pismire . These pismire will fend for and protect the mealybug against any attacking intruder but since the Cryptolaemus looks like a mealybug , it goes along unnoticed deplete its neighbors .
This was my “ gateway biological . ” When I managed the test garden in Miami , we had a very magnanimous mealybug plague on some Podocarpus and the IPM manager at the time consecrate one feeding bottle of Cryptolaemus adults . The massacre was out of this populace and bump very speedily . The good part ? They ate all the waxy residue on the works ! Poof ! Gone ! There was literally no evidence that mealybugs were ever there and they never came back .
So there ’s a rumour that you have 500 plants in your household . Is that true?It read me a while to count ( as you may imagine ) . But yes , the last fourth dimension I weigh it was somewhere around 475 industrial plant . I have a problem . Please someone schedule an intercession ! It start with a Begonia maculata and corkscrew out of control from there .
It must palpate moderately jungly at your place . It is funny because once you get up to that many plants your house / flat starts to create its own biome . It is always a good 10 - 20 % more humid in my house than it is outside .
What ’s your favorite plant?My Anthurium clarinervium will in all probability always be my pet plant in my accumulation . It is indestructible and its leaf are like paintings . Lately I have been experimenting with growing these from seeds which has been a very rewarding process . The time from pollination to planting is about the same as the human gestation period catamenia ! There was a group of seedling that I pollinated the hebdomad that I found out I was go to be an aunt and they were ready to institute on the workweek my niece was born . The serendipity of the timing was not fall back on me .
You mentioned that you love to take macro photograph of insects . Can you share your favored photo ? So what ’s so special about this little guy?This is a hunter tent flap and they hurt from a serious case of mistaken identity . Most people mean that these are just regular old Musca domestica and they pour down them , but they are actually beneficials . They are voracious predator and will run through anything that flies in front of them ( include their siblings ) . They are smaller than most flies and have grey stripes on their abdominal cavity . When it doubt about what it is , watch it . hunting watch flies tend to sit still on the surface of a leaf waiting for their next victim . They will pounce off the leaf , catch the insect in mid air , drink down it , suck it ironical and then leave behind the empty shell behind . It is also the reason that we will on occasion see dead gnat on the tops of leaves . When we see that , we know a hunter fly was there . There ’s not a set of research available on these guys but I do retrieve that they are a very significant part of any IPM program and that they do a lot more good than we give them credit for .
If you could be a good worm , which one would you be?This is really ruffianly … I guess I would be an Orius aka “ mo buccaneer glitch . ” First of all , what a coolheaded name . But furthermore , these guy cable are my hero as they keep us from a thripocalypse a couple of summers ago . They are thripid murder car , but at the same fourth dimension , I have seen them jab other various pests I imagine mostly for playfulness . I could see myself just going in , hitman blaze away trying to take down as many pests as possible before I go diapause and take a long winter snooze . For more informationCosta Farmswww.costafarms.com
