Browse Plant Pests and Diseases Stories - Page 24

The 2012 Georgia Pest Management Handbook is now available. The thirty-third Commercial Edition, published by the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, provides more than 800 pages of current information on selection, application and safe use of pest control chemicals around farms, homes, urban areas, recreational areas and other environments where pests may occur.

Thousands of broken trees line the banks of the Chattooga River. The dead gray stabs were once evergreen monsters offering shade to trout and picturesque views to visitors. These Eastern hemlocks are dying rapidly, and University of Georgia researchers are working to save them.

Mistletoe is often used postmortem to lure unsuspecting sweethearts to a Christmastime kiss. For the other 364 days of the year, it is actually considered an infectious parasite that kills trees.

Pine bark beetles can be the death of pines in forests and home landscapes.

Temperatures are finally dropping in Georgia and people are staying inside to keep warm, and so are the famous kudzu bugs. University of Georgia experts offer tips on how to keep the tiny pests from invading your home.

More than 200 species of stink bugs call North America home. As many as 60 species live in Georgia. One more was recently discovered in southern South Carolina. The brown marmorated stink bug, or Halyomorpha halys, will likely soon invade Georgia, according to a University of Georgia entomologist.

Are you noticing webs in some of the trees throughout your landscape? I always get multiple calls during the late summer and early fall about webs in trees and worms crawling on everything. The fall webworm is the pest weaving these problems.

Adult mole crickets spend winter underground. When temperatures warm, they emerge, feed and mate. Their flights begin in March and continue through June when their numbers, and damage, in an area can increase quickly.

In the sunny days of spring, you won't even notice the tiny young of some beautiful spiders emerging in your garden. But keep watching. By late summer or early fall, you may be able to see these large, striking spiders as they trap and eat insect pests.

From time to time, someone somewhere in Georgia turns over a rock or log and finds a grayish brown, flat worm with a head shaped like a half-moon. It's one of those things that, when you find it, you just have to find out what it is.