In today’s podcast, we talk with Karey Winbiel-Rojas, Associate Director for Urban and Community Integrated Pest Management at the University of California, to explore the top 10 pest concerns for homeowners and gardeners in 2025. We discuss the evolving landscape of pest management, focusing on less toxic control methods, and proper pest and beneficial insects identification.
Lots of links and photos in the transcript. Click on the headers for more information.
TOP TEN PESTS OF 2025
(according to number of visits to the UCANR Pests in the Urban Landscape web pages)
Farmer Fred:
[0:00] Over the decades, I’ve received, as you know, a lot of garden questions, and my go-to site for it to get good answers is the University of California Integrated Pest Management Program. They have a great IPM page, which is Integrated Pest Management, that includes just about solutions and identification factors for just about any pest you can think of. And because it is integrated pest management, they start with the least toxic solution, which is the way to go. And in my mind, over the decades, that is the biggest single change I’ve seen in how people ask questions. It used to be, what can I buy to spray to get rid of whatever pest? And now most people, when they ask the question, they say, what can I do to control or get rid of this pest? Great. That’s a great way to go, to go to mechanical, cultural, physical controls before you reach for the spray can. And that’s what basically IPM is. And leading the IPM charge for the University of California is their associate director for urban and community IPM, Karey Windbiel-Rojas. Yes, Karey, it’s great having you here on the program to talk about an interesting project that you’ve recently completed, compiling all the visitors who visited the IPM page, and you made a list of The Top 10 pests of 2025.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[1:25] Yeah, thank you for having me, Fred. That is true. We like to look at the top pests that people do visit our website and look for. And it gives us good information about where people are having problems.
1. CARPET BEETLES
Farmer Fred:
[1:40] Now, folks, whether your favorite is on the list or not, I’m not sure. I mean, my favorite isn’t on the list, which are birds, but that’s OK. I know how to deal with them. But there’s a lot of pests on here that might be considered more of a nuisance or more of a nuisance indoors. And that’s interesting when people are looking for pest solutions. They first want to get the pests out of the house. And frankly, I don’t blame them. And number one on your list for website hits for people to find answers to controlling are carpet beetles. Who would have thought? Yeah.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[2:16] Yeah. Isn’t that interesting? Carpet beetles have been one of our top hit getters for a couple of years. It sort of ebbs and flows every year. They’re not always at the top. But, yeah, in 2025, they were number one for number of visits to our site.
Farmer Fred:
[2:36] And because it is a beetle, they look kind of like little little ladybugs, except with different coloring. And I think that’s really prime when it comes to finding a solution for a pest problem. Number one is identify the pest correctly, because a lot of these bugs look alike.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[2:56] Right. And many times people will think that the carpet beetle that they found is actually a bed bug because they are around the same size. They have some similar coloring when they’re so small like that. But once you maybe look at them up close, you can see that they’re not bed bugs. Thank goodness. But yeah, carpet beetles are really small and the adults are found usually where people can see them more easily. They are found on the windowsills, on drapes, sometimes just on the window itself because the adults are actually trying to get back outdoors. The adults feed on pollen and nectar, and they might lay their eggs around bird nests and such, but they come indoors, would you believe it, on cut flowers from our garden. And yeah, that’s an interesting way that people bring them in unknowingly. And they can also be sort of sucked into the house as you’re opening and closing doors. And they’re really small, so they can come in unnoticed. And then they lay their eggs in carpet and feathers and any kind of taxidermy or near the pets. They’re not going to feed on pets, which is a good thing. but they do eat lots of other items indoors that you may not even think.
Farmer Fred:
[4:22] Well, just like any house with teenagers whose parents usually find an empty refrigerator as a common problem in their household, in the bug world, it is the teenagers, the nymph stage, that does most of the damage. And this is true with the carpet beetle, isn’t it?
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[4:42] Yes. So the larval stage of the carpet beetles, the immatures or the teenagers, as you put it, which is such a great analogy. It is the destructive teenagers, the larvae that do the damage indoors. The adults being pollen and nectar feeders, they’re outside, they’re pollinators, if you will. But the juvenile, the larval stage, they are wingless and they crawl. They kind of look like little hairy maggots. And they are the ones that are going to be in the carpet or in areas where you’ve got wool or natural fibers. They’ll feed on silk. They’ll feed on furs, feathers. So where people tend to find them more is, when they are cleaning up around carpet. But even if you don’t have carpet, you could have blankets or other things that they’ll feed on. and, And especially when you have items stored, like in storage, they may not have tight-fitting lids where the larvae could easily get in, the adults can get in and lay their eggs. And they’re easily unnoticed.
Farmer Fred:
[5:51] By the way, we’re going to have pictures of all the pests we’re talking about in today’s Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter. So you can refer to that to see what a lot of these critters look like, along with more information about controlling them and links. In fact, at the page where you put up this top 25 list or the top, I’m going to do that again. In that post you put up a few weeks ago about the top 10 pests of 2025, each of the pests that you talk about also has a link with even more information.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[6:22] Right. And that picture of carpet beetles that’s there with the pink background, that is an art project that my kids did. And I found those in my house. So here I am, you know, the integrated pest management person for the state, and I too have pests. So anyone can have pests. It’s when you maybe least expect it. So I found in their art projects that I kept in a bin that wasn’t with a tight-fitting lid, I found that it was attacked by carpet beetles. So don’t despair. We all get pests.
Farmer Fred:
[6:55] Right. And you can even find them in leather book bindings for all of you with a library.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[7:00] Mm-hmm. That is true. Multiple pests.
Farmer Fred:
[7:20] Let’s talk about how to control carpet beetles. I see one way to do it would be to have a synthetic carpet and nothing made out of natural fibers.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[7:30] Well, that is one way to keep them out of the carpet. But since there are definitely other materials that they can attack, one way to keep them away from furs and wool and materials like that is to keep things in storage where they are in a bin or some sort of storage area with a tight-fitting lid. Exclusion is a really great non-chemical way to keep pests from getting to the things you don’t want them to get at. And vacuuming is a fantastic way to remove the pests and physically remove them. And vacuuming is such an underrated type of control method for any kind of pests that you might have around. If you can see it, you can vacuum it.
Farmer Fred:
[8:28] As long as you remember to empty that vacuum bag and put it in the trash.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[8:32] That is true.
Farmer Fred:
[8:33] Yeah. By the way, if you have a walk-in freezer, you can take that deer head that’s mounted over the fireplace and stick it in the freezer for two weeks, as well.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[8:41] That’s true. If you do have a large enough freezer, if you find that carpet beetles are attacking art projects or feathers or something that is maybe smaller and you only have a regular size freezer, you can put items in the freezer as well, as long as it’s a material that won’t be damaged by the kind of cold that freezing cold temperatures.
Farmer Fred:
[9:06] I was surprised to learn, and this is something you can’t put in a freezer, pianos can become infested because the carpet beetles are attracted to the felts and the hammers, and it can affect the tone and action of the instrument.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[9:21] Yes, that is really true. And I know, and we don’t cover this in our online resource, but if there is piano or string instruments around, you definitely want to try and keep the carpet beetles out. There are products that you can put in that sort of fumigate, if you will, but we really discourage those because those can put off volatile chemicals. So exclusion is really the best way when possible.
2. FUNGUS GNATS
Farmer Fred:
[9:54] And moving on to pest number two is one that people are probably a little bit more familiar with because they do like moist houseplants, and that’s fungus gnats.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[10:05] Yes, fungus gnats are a really big pest that people come to our website to visit and get information because you’ll see the adults flying around and they may or may not be right around the houseplant. They might just be in the kitchen. They might come around depending on how many houseplants you have. And they can be more of an annoyance than any real damage, but they can damage the houseplant if the infestation is really high.
Farmer Fred:
[10:36] And I guess, again, this is something that the immature fungus gnat can go after, especially the roots of plants.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[10:45] Yeah. So, the fungus gnats, immatures, also larvae. Think of maggots because these gnats are flies. They live in the soil. The larvae, the immatures, do not fly. So, they can only stay in the soil. And they do feed on the roots of the plants and can stunt plant growth or just make the plant not function and be as healthy as possible. And the main reason that fungus gnats are in the houseplants is because of moisture. And that’s the biggest control tactic or solution is to control the moisture of the houseplant. And it’s something that gets really overlooked. People might see gnats and want to spray them or do something. But without controlling the conditions that are causing the gnats or the pest to continue to flourish, you won’t get any kind of long-term control.
Farmer Fred:
[11:48] They’re pretty easy to spot, too, if the adults are around the nymphs, because all you have to do is basically shake a houseplant and all of a sudden you might see a cloud of little flying insects.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[12:02] Yeah, they’re really easy to spot. They’re darker colored. They’re not white like white flies, which is the next one we’ll talk about. But yeah, they’re easy to spot. And there are sticky traps that you can get or you can make your own little sticky traps where you put them around the plant and stick it in the soil of the plant to catch the adults. But again, that just helps you kind of trap them so you can identify and monitor how bad the infestation is. But the main thing that needs to be done is to minimize the moisture in the soil. And that will not allow the larvae to continue to have an environment that helps them grow. And then once you do that, then the fungus gnats will go away.
Farmer Fred:
[12:49] Let’s talk a little bit about sticky traps. They can come in a variety of colors. I use yellow sticky traps out in my greenhouse to help me identify who’s flying around in there. You also (accidentally) get some beneficials, but that’s okay. As long as you have some good resources to identify these things, you can pick out the one that could be the pest. So there are yellow sticky traps, there are blue sticky traps, and there are white sticky traps that you might know of as putting in a pantry to help control some grain-eating pests.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[13:21] Yeah, the yellow sticky traps are attractive to certain insects. There are white colored sticky traps that are attractive to other insects, or the traps are white because the color of them doesn’t matter. So in the case of the traps that you put in the pantry, those traps usually have a pheromone that comes with the trap, and it attracts the males so that the males think they’re going to mate with a female, and they go in and they get stuck. With fungus gnats, the yellow sticky traps are what we recommend to use. And you can just get any yellow sticky trap from a retail nursery and garden center and you can cut it into smaller squares and attach it to some sort of stick or popsicle stick or skewer and then place it in the pot. And this will be attractive to the gnats. The other sticky traps with other colors, And we’ll probably talk about that, too. Some insects are attracted to the blue color that’s used for some sticky traps. But for fungus gnats, the yellow sticky traps work well.
Farmer Fred:
[14:34] Okay, the yellow sticky traps for fungus gnats. And here’s a tip I learned the hard way. When you get that sticky stuff on your fingers, if you’re setting a lot of these traps, the easiest way to get the sticky stuff off is to put a little vegetable oil on your hands, and that helps remove it.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[14:48] Yeah, yeah. Got to be careful with those sticky traps. They are sticky.
3. WHITEFLIES
Farmer Fred:
[14:51] Yes, yes, they are. I just replaced all of mine in the greenhouse, but I did wash my hands. All right. You mentioned whiteflies. Let’s talk whiteflies. That was the number three most researched pest at the UC IPM site. And who doesn’t have whiteflies? I mean, whiteflies seem to be everywhere, especially in the spring.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[15:15] Yeah, whiteflies can be a really big pest on some plants. There are a number of different species, and some have a really wide host range in that they will attack some of our vegetables or ornamental plants, and some even go to weeds. And the weeds can be harboring plant for the whiteflies and then they’ll come over to your desirable plants. But the kind of whitefly you have may depend on what host, what plant it’s attacking. And so on our website, you can see in our pest notes publication different kinds of whiteflies and their favorite plants that they attack.
Farmer Fred:
[16:02] Really? There’s a lot of them too. Sweet potato whitefly, a mulberry whitefly, citrus whitefly, iris whitefly, and the list goes on and on.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[16:11] Yeah, and just because they’re named iris whitefly or mulberry whitefly, that might not be their only favorite host. So mulberry whitefly, for instance, goes to avocado trees and citrus trees and some other trees. And we do have those listed on our website as well. One of the issues with whiteflies is some of the species create a lot of waste product that is sticky. And we call it honeydew. And the honeydew can really make a mess in the garden. And especially for whiteflies that are in the trees, some of those species create quite a bit of honeydew. And that sticky stuff can get on trees or leaves below, any other plants below, lawn furniture, the sidewalk, your car. And then the resulting thing that happens with honeydew is a fungus called sooty mold can also grow on that sticky honeydew. And this can all just lead to kind of a big mess in the garden.
Farmer Fred:
[17:19] And that big mess also would include ants that would be herding these small pests around because the ants are harvesting that honeydew and taking it back to the nest. So if you want to control white flies or aphids and you see ants going up and down the plant, you need to control the ants too.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[17:37] Yes, absolutely. And what the ants will do, as you said, is they’ll harvest that honeydew and take it and feed the nest. So they’ll protect the whiteflies from the whitefly predators and parasites. And there are many, many different types of species of predators like certain ladybugs and certain other generalist predators that will come and eat the white flies. But there are a whole bunch of parasitic wasps that also lay their eggs inside the white flies and cause them to eventually die. And so the ants will actually protect the white flies from those what we call natural enemies or predators and parasites. and they’ll fight with them. They’ll throw them off the plant. And so, yeah, controlling those ants is one method of controlling the whiteflies too by allowing the biological control to actually get to them.
Farmer Fred:
[18:36] By the way, in today’s newsletter, we’re going to have a link to a report (below) I did a while back about beneficial insects, the bad bugs they control, and the plants they love because they need a source for pollen and nectar as well. So you put in the right plants to attract the beneficials and they’ll spot those bad guys like the white flies and the aphids and go after them.
Plants to Attract Beneficial Insects, Part 1
Plants to Attract Beneficial Insects, Part 2
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[19:00] Yeah, that’s fantastic. People need to know what plants to plant and also how to tell the difference between the good bugs and the bad bugs.
Farmer Fred:
[19:08] Right. I think that was one of the most exciting things I ever saw in my garden. I believe it was on a pepper plant. This was years ago. But I did notice some aphids on it. But I also saw some ants on it. And this ant actually tossed a parasitic wasp off the plant. It was amazing.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[19:31] Yeah, yeah, it’s quite dramatic. We have a video on the UCIPM website where we got footage of an ant doing exactly that. There was a parasite that was laying its egg into a scale insect, and the ant came across it and picked it up and threw it off the end of the edge of the plant. So they do that, yeah. Yeah.
Farmer Fred:
[20:00] One thing I would like to help people out with here is when they see damage to the plant, pay attention to the damage. Are they circular holes? Is it a jagged cut? Is it spots? Because insects have different ways of doing damage. There are sucking insects, there are rasping insects, there are sucking-rasping insects, and then there are the chewing insects as well… or other pests that do a lot of chewing, like the little birds on my Swiss chard. But that’s a different story. To identify those pests, you need to know exactly what sort of damage they do and what to look for on the plant. In a lot of situations, the answer might be on the underside of the leaf.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[20:45] Right, yeah. So in the case of whiteflies, you usually do find them on the underside of the leaves. And whiteflies like aphids and mealybugs and psyllids and leafhoppers and several other kinds of insects, they have a piercing mouth part. So they have a little needle-like mouthpart that they put into the plant and they suck out the plant juices. And so, as you mentioned, the damage is not going to be part of the plant that has been chewed off, like from a caterpillar who has chewing mouthparts. The whiteflies and aphids are going to suck the plant material out and some, but not all, leave behind little bleached or stippled areas of the plants where the chlorophyll in the cell has been removed. and you can actually see that. Whereas other piercing and sucking insects, when they suck the plant juices out, they might cause the leaf to curl or the fruit to distort or little blotches. So yeah, the type of damage that you see can be a good indicator of what kind of insect or pest is attacking that plant.
And you said earlier that pest identification is really important. Before you start doing any kind of pest control, you need to know what pest you are contending with.
Farmer Fred:
[22:15] You mentioned earlier that you can find the pre-invasion of whiteflies perhaps in the weeds that might be outside your garden, and controlling those weeds can go a long way to helping the whitefly problem be abated. What sort of environment are they looking for? What attracts whiteflies to plants?
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[22:37] The species of whitefly may be attacking the plants that are its favorite, as we talked about earlier, the favorite host plant. But a lot of the sucking insects, they have those really fine needle-like mouthparts, and they tend to go to the new growth of a plant, the softer new leaves that come out. And because they can get their small mouthparts into that part of the plant better. So you’ll find whiteflies generally on the newer growth. And so that’s a good way to to look for them is to look on the new growth and the softer plant material.
Farmer Fred:
[23:27] And that brings up another integrated pest management point: you don’t want to over fertilize young plants with nitrogen that produce a lot of green growth because it is that new growth that the bad insects find so attractive.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[23:41] Right. And that goes with a lot of the piercing and sucking insects. We’ll talk about aphids and thrips in a little bit.
It’s the same thing, they have the small mouth parts and they like that fresh new growth. So when you over-fertilize, and we’re not saying don’t fertilize, fertilize a plant that needs it, but if you over-fertilize, especially with nitrogen, it causes a huge flush of new growth, and that can actually attract these piercing and sucking insects to your garden.
4. SPRINGTAILS
Farmer Fred:
[24:13] All right. Moving on that list of the top 10 pests of 2025 compiled by the University of California Integrated Pest Management folks. Number four is something I have no familiarity with, and I’m wondering who in the heck is battling springtails.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[24:30] Isn’t it interesting? We have never seen springtails be a problem in such great numbers that people would come to our website for. Springtails are actually a different group. They’re not insects. They used to be in the insect classification, but now they have been pulled out as non-insects, and they are really small jumping critters that resemble insects, and they can be found both indoors and outdoors. But yeah, 2025 was the first year that springtails rose to the top of our list. And I do think it’s because 2025, especially in some parts of California, were a lot more moist than in other years.
We saw more moisture issues with pests in some areas in 2025. So that is what attracts the springtails, and it’s the conditions that they thrive in is really moist areas like kitchen sinks or bathtubs. They can be in the soil of houseplants as well, just like those fungus gnats. But outdoors, springtails can be in the landscaped areas, both with ornamental plants and also vegetable gardens. They can be in mud puddles. People find them in numbers in swimming pools. So these are really moisture-loving critters that look like insects, but they are not technically insects. And they’re really more of a nuisance problem. They don’t do very much damage to pests and definitely not to household, But they can get really numerous and and just people don’t like them.
Farmer Fred:
[26:25] Well, especially if you’re cleaning up around a moist area and all of a sudden little things start jumping up and attaching to you. A lot of people might confuse them for fleas. But unlike fleas, springtails don’t bite, do they?
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[26:39] No, they don’t bite, but they do jump. They have this little appendage that sticks out from their backside called a furcula, and it does cause them to jump. So they sort of spring, if you will. And so they might make people think that they’re fleas. And obviously, nobody wants fleas in the house, and you also don’t want any other kind of jumping critter. But yeah, they don’t bite. They don’t attack the pet. They won’t get into your hair, or if they do, they won’t stay there. And so they’re not harmful. But, you know, just like any indoor pest, a lot of people find them to be a nuisance, and they don’t want them there.
Farmer Fred:
[27:22] And probably just like ants, one of the ways to control them from coming inside would be to plug up any holes on the outside of the house around screens and cracks and caulking and just to keep them out of the house.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[27:37] Yeah. Exclusion is a really great way to keep crawling insects and even larger things like rats out of the house. Springtails are much smaller, so they are a little harder to exclude. But you can cock up cracks where they can crawl in and find a suitable environment. And vacuuming, as I said earlier, vacuuming up pests when you can see them and also cleaning up crumbs or anything will help with any sort of pantry pest. And in the case of springtails, the main type of management is controlling the moisture because that is what’s going to help them thrive. So using that exclusion, caulking, weather stripping, and any kind of appropriate material in that way.
Farmer Fred:
[28:29] And I guess, too, to help keep them out of the house, you get in the habit of cleaning up any leaves, especially wet leaves that might be next to the house that got blown there by the wind after a storm.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[28:41] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So if you have an outdoor habitat that’s going to be suitable and it’s right next to an entry point, then they can be in that litter, they can be in that moist environment and then find their way in as well. So thinking about indoor and outdoor, what is attracting them,
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[28:59] and see what you can do to modify that. All right.
After the paywall: Descriptions and control tips for thrips, spider, mites, aphid, scale, clothes moths, and peach leaf curl.
5. THRIPS
Farmer Fred:
[29:02] We’re going through the Top 10 pests of 2025 as compiled by the University of California Integrated Pest Management System. We’re talking to the Associate Director for Urban and Community IPM, Carrie Windbiel-Rojas. And the number five pest on your list is an oldie but a goodie, thrips.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[29:20] Yeah, thrips are sort of fun. I always want to tell people, it’s always plural, thrips. You don’t have a thrip. There are always thrips, whether you have one or a hundred. So thrips are really small flying insects that can be on a number of different plants. When we were talking about whiteflies, we mentioned how many species of whiteflies there are and the hosts that they attack. Same thing with thrips. In California, we have a lot of different species of thrips, and they have their favorite host plant as well. Some will attack trees such as avocados and citrus or fig or ornamentals like laurel. And then some attack ornamental plants and can cause some really bad damage to specific plants. And then some will get on flowers and some will be on vegetables. So there’s any number of thrips that could attack whatever you’re growing in your landscape.
Farmer Fred:
[30:21] When I had a nice fence line of Thompson seedless grapes, in the summertime, you might hear loud noises coming from the plants, especially if you brushed up against it. And it was the sound of thrips landing on the leaf.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[30:37] Interesting. I have not heard that.
Farmer Fred:
[30:39] Now, is that a pest that can be controlled by a blue colored sticky trap?
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[30:45] Yes, thrips are attracted to sticky traps. They can be monitored by using the yellow sticky traps, which are a little bit easier to find. I have heard that they like the blue color better, but it’s easier in the retail nursery and garden centers to find the yellow. And so you can use those. And they are used for monitoring these traps. They’re not necessarily used for controlling. And the reason why monitoring is important is because you need to know the extent of your infestation so that you can sort of gauge your control measures appropriately. If you just have a couple thrips and you might be seeing a little bit of damage, it might not be that big of a deal. But if you’re seeing a lot of thrips on these monitoring traps, then you may need to up your control measures.
Farmer Fred:
[31:48] In the garden, there are some good guys trying to help you out like parasitic wasps. And the minute pirate bug is also big on going after thrips.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[31:57] Yeah, there are many generalist predators that occur naturally in our landscape. And the minute pirate bug, which is one of my favorite predators, insect predators, it’s such a small insect. It’s about the size of an aphid, and some of them are actually smaller. But they do attack thrips, especially the immature stages. They will attack other small, soft-bodied insects in the garden as well. And minute pirate bugs also have a piercing and sucking mouth part. So they pierce into their prey and they sort of suck out the bodily juices.
Farmer Fred:
[32:41] Minute pirate bug, too, is one that you want to positively identify because it is a garden good guy. And we’ll have a picture of the minute pirate bug in today’s newsletter so you can see what it looks like. You don’t want to be killing this guy. And by using integrated pest management techniques, that is controls that use mechanical, physical, cultural controls, by using those techniques, instead of reaching for the spray, you’re helping to preserve the good guy population. Because when you apply a non-selective pesticide to a plant and spray it on, you’re killing the good guys and the bad guys.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[33:18] Yeah, yeah, that is a really important point to make, that many of the pesticides that we might use to control the pests that we don’t want could end up hurting the good guys, the beneficial predators and the parasites. And these parasites are usually little flying, tiny, tiny wasps that you may not even see. And so you may not know that they’re there. And so we want to make sure that in integrated pest management, our theory is that you want to try the non-chemical controls first before turning to a pesticide because you don’t know what else might be in your garden that’s actually there to help you. And we don’t want to spray a broad spectrum pesticide that’s going to kill the good guys as well.
Farmer Fred:
[34:09] One of the biggest lessons I learned one winter while growing tomatoes in a greenhouse is that whiteflies will multiply quickly. And sometimes the easiest way to control a whitefly population in a greenhouse is just get rid of the plant with the most whiteflies on it and put it in the trash.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[34:28] Yeah, you know, sometimes gardeners, they don’t like that as a solution. You mean get rid of the whole plant? Yeah. But it is a solution. If you are finding that a plant is a magnet for certain pests or it is a harboring site for a pest that then goes attacks an edible or something that you really love, the solution is sometimes get rid of that plant. The management that you’ll have to go through every year may not be something that you want to do. And so if you can switch to a different kind of plant that does not have the same pest issues or maybe has very few pest issues, then that is another IPM technique is, you know, plant a plant that’s not going to be problematic when it comes to pests and that you can care for and that’s the right plant for where you are growing it.
6. SPIDER MITES
Farmer Fred:
[35:24] In our hot, dry summers here in the Central Valley and wherever you have a hot summer and low humidity, you probably have spider mites. Then that’s the number six top most researched pest in the top 10 list. Spider mites. And who hasn’t dealt with those and gotten tangled up in their little webs?
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[35:46] Right. Spider mites can be a really big problem in some areas, especially as you said, hot, dry conditions. They thrive in dusty conditions as well. So you may have a dry summer and you’re growing some of your cucurbits, the squashes and watermelons and spider mite numbers can really increase on those. And spider mite damage, we were talking about piercing and sucking insects, and spider mites are not insects. Spider mites are actually related to spiders. They are arachnids, but they have mouth parts that sort of grip onto the plant and they suck out the juices. So they don’t also chew leaves. So they leave the same kind of damage that we see from leafhoppers and some whiteflies and thrips where they suck out the cell contents and remove some of that green chlorophyll. And so you can see their damage pretty well. But one really good way to distinguish between one of those other sucking insects I mentioned and spider mites is that spider mites leave that webbing behind. And they live on the webs and they tie the leaves together. And so that’s a really good indication that you have spider mites and not one of the other pests.
Farmer Fred:
[37:15] I like the idea that one good control for spider mites is just a spray of water.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[37:21] Yeah. It’s something that you may not automatically think about just to spray down the dust. When I worked in agriculture, we had some bean trials with some insects. And one of our growers said, you know, when you drive down the row here, you have to go really slow because these bean plants are attacked by spider mites and all the dust from driving down that dirt road just will explode the population. So we learned that we needed to drive real slow. But in our front yards and backyards, that’s not necessarily the case of driving is going to bring up the dust. But in the summer months when it’s drier, you know, taking the hose and just hosing down the area and reducing the dust is one way to reduce the numbers. It’s not going to completely get rid of them, of course. It’s just one in the whole scheme of the integration of the different methods to arrive at the pest control is doing this plus other things.
Farmer Fred:
[38:29] And I know that many commercial growers are now incorporating cover crops, low-growing cover crops, between the rows on their farm to help keep that dust down. That cover crop does a whole world of good, and it also keeps the dust down.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[38:43] Yeah, the cover crops, you know, every grower is going to have a different sort of system. But some of the cover crops act as nitrogen fixers. Some of the cover crops are pollen and nectar-producing plants. And so it will attract the adult stages of some of the predators and parasites that will then go over to their crop and predate upon or parasitize the pest insect and keeping down the dust. And also, cover crops can also crowd out any weeds. And we talked earlier. Some weeds are attractive to some of our garden and landscape pests. So cover crops can really do a lot for our integrated pest management system.
Farmer Fred:
[39:33] And we should point out again that spider mites are not an insect. And if you decide you’re going to spray them and you reach for your insect spray. It might not do anything because you don’t want to use an insecticide on a spider mite. You’d want to use a miticide, but why do that if you’ve got a hose with the water?
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[39:58] Right. Yeah, there’s so many non-chemical controls that you can use before turning to a pesticide. Some of the pesticides that are out there actually do work on mites as well. Some of the insecticidal soaps and insecticidal oils and horticultural oils do work against mites too. But again, with our integrated pest management practice, we want to try and manage our pests in a more sustainable way. And that usually entails doing all the other non-chemical controls, you know, keeping down that dust, relying on the biological control, hosing the plant to try and knock some of them off, and doing all of those things before turning to a pesticide.
Farmer Fred:
[40:47] Right. And among the good guys that are trying to help you battle those spider mites are big eyed bugs, lace wings, and minute pirate bugs. I always love to see the eggs of the lace wings, and they’re usually most noticeable as the sun is coming up or the sun is going down, especially if there’s a heavy dew. You can get a reflection of this little single thread hanging down from a leaf with what It looks like a little Q-tip on the very end of it, but that’s a future lacewing (a beneficial insect).
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[41:15] Yeah, I love showing people pictures of lacewing eggs, which sometimes you’ll see just one. Sometimes you’ll see a whole cluster of that fine silk thread with the white egg at the end. I like the Q-tip idea. I will start using that in my lectures because that is what they look like. And once you recognize the different life stages of some of the beneficials, you do end up seeing them more. You kind of don’t know what you don’t know. But once you see what the lacewing eggs look like and the lacewing larvae and adults, then I find that you start to see them. And I see lacewing eggs on all kinds of plants. I mean, crepe myrtles have a lot of different pests and the lacewings love eating those pests. But you’ll see lacewing eggs on any kind of plant where that egg will hatch into the larvae, and then the larvae will go and eat some of your pests.
Farmer Fred:
[42:22] So bring on the good guys. Yeah, definitely. And preserve those lacewings, because if you start seeing those little silk threads, it’s not a problem. Lacewings can help you. Lace wings also, especially in the spring, you can find them attracted to a porch light and maybe stuck on your screen door.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[42:42] Oh, yeah, the adult lacewings are attracted to lights, and then they get stuck in the spider webs that the spiders have woven around your porch light because that’s a great place for spiders to catch some of those light-loving adult flying insects. Back to the lacewing eggs, someone showed me a picture the other day. She thought it was a fungus growing off of her leaf, and because it kind of looked like little spores. But I showed her a picture on our website that that is actually lacewing larvae, but she was about to spray it with a fungicide, thinking that it was fungal spores growing off, and she had no idea that those were lacewing eggs. And so, again, once you recognize these life stages and what they are, it’ll help you make some decisions for what to do or what not to do and ways to protect our good bugs.
7. APHIDS
Farmer Fred:
[43:41] We’ll probably end up talking about fungicides when we come to pest number 10, but that’s for later. Number seven on the list of the top 10 pests of 2025. Oh, they’re getting ready to attack. I’m telling you, there’s new growth on the roses. That’s one of the first places you’re going to spot them is on the new growth of roses, and that’s aphids.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[44:01] Yeah, there’s an aphid for just about any plant that’s out there, I feel. Aphids are one of our number one pests that are almost always in our annual top 10 pest notes that people visit on our website. And aphids, just like we were talking about with whiteflies and thrips, there are so many different species. And most of them only attack a certain host or maybe groupings of hosts. And if you go to the aphids pest notes on the UCIPM website, you’ll see a really long list with some pictures of different aphids. Some are green, some are peach, some are actually kind of hairy and woolly. Some have a waxy cuticle. and so identifying that you have an aphid on the plants and then knowing what to do about them but I’ll tell you I do get aphids on my roses every year and probably today they’ve already shown up since it’s been a little sunny in the Sacramento area where I live. But there are so many different predators that love eating aphids. And that goes for ladybugs, also known as lady beetles. There are many different species of lady beetles that will eat different aphids. There are parasitic wasps, as I was describing earlier when we were talking about whiteflies. There are hundreds of species of parasitic wasps that usually have a favorite species of aphid that they attack and lay their eggs in. And then that egg ends up killing the aphid. So there’s a lot of biological control for aphids. Syrphid flies, we haven’t talked about syrphid flies yet. Syrphid flies are also called hoverflies or flower flies. They resemble bees in their markings on their bodies, but they’re actually flies. And they will, as adults, visit plants that have pollen and nectar sources. Then they lay their eggs near a food source like aphids. And then the larvae will hatch into what look like little caterpillars, but they’re actually fly larvae. And they are big eaters. Those are the teenagers of the fly world that they will really do some damage on the aphids. So they’re not eating plants. They’re eating the aphids that are eating your plants. So there’s a lot of great biocontrol for aphids out there.
Farmer Fred:
[46:32] Yeah, hoverflies fascinate me. They’re like small little bees. When you first see them, you go, oh, that’s a real tiny bee. They love California buckwheat, which is one of my favorite California native plants to put in to attract beneficial insects because there’s a bloom on a California buckwheat from, what, April, May through November. And the little hoverflies love it. And they love the Euryops, too, which is probably an overused foundation plant in our area or was many years ago. But the great thing about the Euryops is it has its yellow daisy-like flowers. All fall and winter.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[47:11] Yeah. So these are really great beneficials that can help us do the kind of pest control we need and contribute to it. So again, when we’re talking about integrated pest management, we’re not usually going to find one silver bullet that’s going to be the one answer that gets rid of the pest for the whole season. It’s a combination of some biological control from these good guys and cultural controls, modifying the habitat, and maybe some physical controls like keeping the ants away or pruning an infested part of the plant that is something that we can prune off a plant. Or, you know, blocking pests from coming indoors. All of this is used in combination. And if needed and if really warranted, maybe some chemical control that’s going to be a less toxic pesticide.
Farmer Fred:
[48:15] And don’t forget those good guys need water as well. So if you have a bird bath or a backyard water feature, well, yeah, the birds will go to it, but so will a lot of beneficial insects.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[48:25] Right. The beneficial insects, some of them do get their water needs from their food source. And so they may not need to have a secondary source of water. But some of them do need that extra moisture and extra water, especially when you buy the lady beetles, the ladybugs that you buy in the store. Those are kept in a cold storage before they are sold. And the cold, keeping them in the refrigerator, keeps their metabolism low. But it also dries them out. And so when you are going to release the ladybugs that you buy, they’re going to be thirsty and they’re also going to be hungry. And so one trick of keeping the ladybugs on the plants that you release them on is to mix up a little bit of sugar water, not super sweet, just a little sugar in water. It gives them that sugar, carbohydrates, but also the water because they are thirsty. And spraying the base of the plant, don’t spray the sugar on the plant, that’ll just attract ants, but giving a little bit of water to those beneficials. But yeah, you’ll find dragonflies going to your water features. Dragonflies are also beneficial. And yeah, everything needs a little bit of hydration every so often.
8. SCALE
Farmer Fred:
[49:50] All right. Number eight on the top 10 pests of 2025, scale. And if you have citrus trees, you may have a scale or for that matter, on just about any plant. Scales can be found on just about any plant.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[50:05] Yeah scales is another one just like aphids and whiteflies and thrips that have we have a lot of species in california and certain scale insects attack certain plants and there are many different kinds of scales there are soft scales there are armored scales and then there are scales that don’t belong in either one of those two groupings but.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[50:31] The soft scales are the scales that produce honeydew because scale insects are also piercing and sucking insects. And scales are interesting because people may not recognize them as insects. In the adult stage, scale insects don’t have any legs and they don’t crawl and they don’t move. They only move in their immature stage, which are called crawlers. They have legs, and they will either crawl to a part of the plant that they will then feed on, or they’ll get blown by the wind to another plant or to other parts of that plant. But once those crawlers get to the part of the plant where they want to feed, they put in their mouth parts, they lose their legs, their scale, their covering, their body covering starts to develop, and then they are immobile, and they don’t move after that. We could talk a lot about scale insects and males and females and how they reproduce, but I don’t know that we have time for that.
Farmer Fred:
[51:36] I think one of the quickest solutions I’ve found for scale is moistening a plastic scouring pad like you’d keep in the kitchen and just rub it up and down gently on the stem of a citrus tree and that removes them, basically.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[51:53] Yeah, if you can reach the parts of the plant where the scale is, that’s certainly part of a getting rid of them or reducing their numbers. You know, when the tree is really large and you can’t reach it, obviously that’s an issue. But just like with the other honeydew producers, ants are going to be harvesting the honeydew of the soft scales and the citrus scales are one of them. And so if you have ants going up your citrus tree or other tree, you want to try and manage the ants, allowing the biological control to reach the scale insects. But yeah, you can scrape scales off with your fingers, you know, just anything. Hosing them off with water doesn’t really work because they are pretty well attached to the plant. We didn’t mention this with aphids, but you can take a strong stream of water with aphids and just knock them off your sturdy plant.
Farmer Fred:
[52:49] Right, especially the new growth on your roses.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[52:51] Yeah, yeah, and that helps reduce the numbers to also allow some of the biological control to get in there and finish the job. For scale insects, however, a stream of water doesn’t work very well because their bodies are sort of streamlined and the water just rushes over them. But you can reduce the ants and try and... You know, have conditions that make the plant healthy. And a healthy plant can often withstand some level of pest pressure.
9. CLOTHES MOTHS
Farmer Fred:
[53:26] The number nine pest on your top 10 pests of 2025 are something that will come as a surprise when you take the clothes out of the closet and you start looking at them. Oh, my goodness, what has been chewing on my clothes? Clothes moths.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[53:41] Yeah, it was really interesting that closed moths came into our top 10 pests this year. And I don’t know why, actually, that they became a problem. Sometimes things rise to the top of our pest list because some other media outlet or some discussion forum mentioned a pest and then everyone goes to that resource to read about it. But closed moths can be one of those hidden pests that you don’t know is there until you start seeing holes in your clothes or you start seeing the little moths fly around. And they are pretty tiny moths. When you look at the UC IPM website, the pictures make them look like they’re huge, but they are really small flying moths. And one of the questions I get many times is, how do you know if they are a moth attacking your food material in the kitchen or they’re a moth attacking your clothes?
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[54:39] And one of the best ways, depending on how your house is situated, is if you have moths around the kitchen, those are probably pantry pests. If you have moths around where you store clothes or in the bedrooms, those are likely going to be clothes moths. But for both of those two, you can buy monitoring traps online or in retail stores where they are particular to whether it’s a pantry pest or a clothes moth. There’s a pheromone that comes with the trap. You put the pheromone in the sticky trap. That pheromone attracts the males thinking that they’re going to a female to go mate. and the males will get stuck in the sticky traps and then you can know the level of your infestation. And again, you’ll get a clothes moth trap for the clothes moth. Put that where your clothes are. Put a Pantry trap in the pantry. And so if you’re not finding any, clothes moths in your closed area, then maybe you don’t have a clothes moth. Maybe you have a pantry pest.
10. PEACH LEAF CURL
Farmer Fred:
[55:46] And the number 10 pest, according to the UC IPM in their list of top 10 pests of 2025, it’s a fungus among us, and it’s probably on a peach or nectarine tree near you. It is peach leaf curl.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[55:58] Yes, peach leaf curl. This pest note is always in our top 10 every year for as long as we’ve and monitoring our top hit getters. And peach leaf curl is a seasonal problem on peach and nectarine trees. Peach leaf curl, some people call it leaf curl. Any kind of tree can have curled leaves for one reason or another. But peach leaf curl only attacks peach and nectarine trees. So if you have an apple tree or a cherry tree that has curling leaves, It’s probably due to something else, and it is not going to be caused by peach leaf curl. So that’s a really important thing to point out is that some pests attack certain plants and others do not. And so for peach leaf curl, this is one where there’s not a lot of non-chemical solutions, unfortunately. The main non-chemical solution is to plant a peach or nectarine tree variety that has been bred to be resistant or partially resistant to the peach leaf curl fungus. But if you have an existing tree that has peach leaf curl, that’s not going to be your solution. Really, one of the only solutions that is based on the research that we’ve done is copper fungicides. And those are, unfortunately for peach leaf curl, it’s one of those where IPM and cultural controls and physical controls just really don’t get to the level of control that’s needed for this fungus. And so this is one of the very few where chemicals is kind of the first stop.
Farmer Fred:
[58:02] I think one of the best controls is by removing, raking up the fallen leaves. It doesn’t do any good to clip off the infected leaves while it’s still on the tree because a lot of that leaf can still photosynthesize and help the tree out. But when they fall to the ground, by cleaning them up, especially, and this is a very weather-dependent problem, if we do get spring rains and you have a tree that has had peach leaf curl in the past, there’s a good chance you’re going to have more of it again, especially if you don’t clean up the fallen leaves on the ground below the tree. And for that matter, if we have a dry spring, we don’t have as much of a peach leaf curl problem.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[58:41] Right. Yeah. And in some areas in California, peach leaf curl is not even much of a problem at all. So it may depend on where you live, but the hot, dry summers helps the fungus survive. And as you said, removing the fallen leaves can help reduce the amount of fungus that’s going to then infect the tree in the next growing season.
Farmer Fred:
[59:12] We’re going to have pictures of all these pests and problems, along with links to where you can find out more information in the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter that accompanies this podcast. So check that out. Carrie Windbiel-Rojas is the Associate Director for Urban and Community IPM for the University of California Cooperative Extension and the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Karey, I think we wore out your brain this morning. Thanks for your help.
Karey Windbiel-Rojas:
[59:40] My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, and I will talk to you soon, I’m sure.
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Fred Hoffman is also a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener in Sacramento County. And he likes to ride his bike(s).
