Big Help for Small Bothers

Is your garden plagued by rabbits or pocket gophers? Pest Notes, little publications from the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, zero in on particular pest problems and tell how to deal with them. Their suggestions are authoritative, accurate and gentle on the environment, and although they have the university’s expertise behind them, they are written specifically for homeowners.

Several new ones come out each year dealing with home and garden pests, so there are Pest Notes on how to cope with household ants as well as wild blackberries. Past subjects include meadow mice, carpet beetles, clothes moths, weed management, poison oak, spider mites, aphids, thrips, snails and slugs, ground squirrels, fleas, spiders around the home, termites, dry-wood termites, powdery mildew and fire blight.

You can find them on the Web at https://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu or you can get copies by calling your county’s UC Cooperative Extension master gardener’s hotline. For Los Angeles County, that would be (323) 838-4541.