Pest Vector: H. Sapiens

As you, my loyal reader(s), may have noticed, I have been absent for some time. Last week, I spoke at the Pesticide Workshop for the 29th Annual Intermountain Container Seedling Growers' Association Meeting. I didn't go out of my way to get air time; I mentioned casually to an investigator with the ISDA that I had given a recertification class in the building where I was taking an exam, and he forwarded my name to the meeting's coordinator. My general policy is not to turn down invitations to speak, so I accepted, and pitched a few ideas until one appealed.

I am seriously reconsidering my speaking policy.

Thanks to my work schedule, and my continuing work on my MSA degree, I have little in the way of free time. I certainly don't have the time to create an hour-long presentation. For those of you who haven't prepared for a speaking gig, an hour of speaking generally requires several hours of preparation. Especially if you're forging into unfamiliar territory.

My topic was "An Ounce of Prevention: Preventing the Spread of New and Ongoing Non-native Pests." Well, my original title was "An Ounce of Prevention." For some reason the coordinators felt the need to apply some editorial privelege to my presentation title.

A PowerPoint presentation is little more than a prompter, used properly, so it was necessary to get up to speed in several areas where I was deficient. I am little acquainted with the nursery industry, and I wanted my message to get across without foolishly stumbling over some inside knowledge that I hadn't been exposed to. The several hours I needed never materialized before the presentation, which was much my own fault as I had a good three-months' warning. I scrambled to cobble together the presentation before D-day, but in vain, it seemed; I simply didn't have enough slides to prompt me in an hour of babbling. Naturally I wasn't feeling too great about the presentation when my time came to walk to the front and display my ignorance of the nursery industry.

Did I mention that this was a quad-state conference? That only happened every other year?

Miraculously, when I had finished speaking and asked for questions while glancing at the clock, I saw that my time was up! I had indeed filled an hour. A few questions followed, and I left, eager to grab some Krispy Kremes before heading south for the long drive home.

So what was my presentation about? I'll fill you in on the main points:

• Arthropodal pests and diseases are, to this very day, introduced to new areas through their ornamental hosts, thanks to the catalog and local retail nursery industry.
• Individual states try to halt this spread through phytosanitary certification, but their routine inspections are usually done no more than once a year, providing the end customer little in the way of assurances that the tree or shrub is free of critters or disease. Furthermore, phytosantitation certificates are primarily intended for interstate, not intrastate, commerce.
• Pesticide application on the growers' end is not only far less costly than on the consumer end, it can prevent the need for repeated applications and the subsequent introduction of much higher volumes of pesticides into the environment. For example: an application of a commonly used systemic insecticide, imidacloprid, to a small clump of birch trees can cost a homeowner in excess of $200 - and must be repeated every year if a population of bronze birch borers has been established. Applications of imidacloprid to 1,000 square feet of birch saplings in a nursery setting costs the grower less than $3 in material. Extrapolate the costs to a single homeowner across an entire community, and then across every community a grower's saplings find entry into, and you can fathom the staggering ethical responsibility that falls on growers to keep their stock free of pests.
• End customers rarely know what they need to know to properly transplant an ornamental and keep it healthy; unhealthy ornamentals are a magnet and breeding ground for pests. Pushing information down the supply chain can aid in combatting pest populations at the market end.

I said this, and much more, during my presentation. Hopefully the information will be shared with others in the industry. The bottom line: we are our own worst enemies.

Of Scrapes and Spider Bites

A new coworker, requested by my employer to write a safety bulletin, revealed that he had sustained a lesion on his chest while inspecting a crawlspace. Because black widows were numerous underneath that particular house, he was concerned. He lost no time in querying the Internet oracle, Google, to diagnose the wound.

Naturally, any search string involving "spider" and "bite" will return a staggering number of webpages of dubious pedigree insisting that any suspicious lesion is the result of a spider bite. This is unfortunate, because numerous serious diseases, and many lesser skin infections, present an appearance much like that produced by envenomation by some of the more infamous arachnids. An improper diagnosis can result in improper treatment or no treatment at all, putting the querent at risk.

My colleague (who lacks a background in sound, scientific critical thought; well, so do most of us, anymore) quickly determined, absent any pathology or without reviewing any alternative hypotheses, that he had sustained a spider bite - just not one from a black widow. As they were the only spiders he observed, this is a strange conclusion. With the aid of legions of the ignorant, empowered by the Internet to post their unqualified opinions to the World Wide Web, others can come to the same dangerous conclusion.

Hopefully most of these folks have only suffered a tiny puncture wound or scratch - the kind many of us sustain without our immediate notice - that was simply infected by a none-too-serious pathogen that the immune system and a few soapy showers will deal with in short order. Visiting a physician with a "spider bite" of this nature frequently results in a prescription antibiotic, which will achieve much the same effect (you might wonder, my loyal reader(s), what an antibiotic does to spider venom, which is not alive - and I'll tell you: nothing).

Relying on a physician for a proper diagnosis is no fail-safe solution. Doctors are trained to diagnosis ailments via symptomology - they make an educated guess. Sometimes they rely on outdated medical literature. Few in the medical profession spend their evenings catching up on the latest journals; those that have any interest in journals are generally more interested in getting published in them in order to boost their egos (and, by proxy, their salaries when the time comes to negotiate for a raise).

You and I are not any different, it is only fair to say. We don't stay up into the wee hours catching up on the latest AICPA opinions, or reading newly published research on the effects of a new neonicitinoid insecticide on arthropodal nerve receptors. No, we prefer to keep abreast of our favorite reality show, or to relax with our friends and a few pints at the local pub.

Matters are made worse when a patient misleads a physician by stating that he or she has been bitten by a spider, when in fact, such an event was never observed, it was just assumed. Doctors are just as fallible as you and I are; leading your own down a dead-end path when you may have a more serious ailment, such as Lyme disease, does you no favors.

So the next you think you've been bitten by a spider, take a break from your reality show and spend some time in this reality - or it may be the last mistake you make.

Pest Control: Landscape Applications: Ethics, What Ethics?

Once again, I have been saddled with an invoice for work that will not in the least bit benefit our client. Somebody at the office I work at scheduled a plant growth regulator (PGR) injection for a cherry tree today - November 11th.

I suppose an explanation is in order. After all, if my office is largely ignorant of what treatments are appropriate when, I can hardly expect you, my loyal reader(s), to have any idea of what I am talking about. Sadly, this ignorance is precisely why so many landscape spray companies make money without doing their clients the least bit of good. Take today, for example. This client is bothered by the fruit that comes off of her tree and litters her lawn. A PGR (plant growth regulator) can dramatically reduce the amount of fruit, and flowering, that this tree puts out in the future - provided the timing of the application is correct. The PGR is best applied in the late summer and early spring in the first year (it is too late to do much of anything if a customer calls late in the spring, which is often the case, due to the way the plant growth regulator works). The label instructions call for the application of the PGR as a direct injection to the cambium tissue of the tree no later than thirty days prior to the first frost. It is now nearly six weeks after the first frost, virtually all the leaves have turned and fallen off with the approach of winter, and the tree is experiencing very little vascular activity.

What good do you think this injection might do? You are correct: none. But the order has come from on high - "Cash is King!" So we perform applications, whether necessary, beneficial, ethical or otherwise, in order to offset the inability of my employer to save money during the busy season. A surplus saved might earn interest in the interim, and ensure some stability and stave off the temptation to make unethical recommendations to customers in order to save a buck, but then, it is so much fun to spend it when the bank accounts are bulging, isn't it? So, my dear and loyal reader(s), buyer beware. Do some research to confirm what your hired gun is telling you - you might save yourself a bundle.