You might be running a 5-star bug hotel and not even realize it.
Cozy beds. Tasty food. Fun activities. And it’s free! It’s a deal so sweet, all the insect pests are totally telling all their friends.
Jump to Section
- How Does Landscaping Invite Pests?
- What Are Common Insects in the Landscape?
- Where Do Bugs Live in the Landscape?
- Landscape Insects Can Damage Your Plants, Too
- How to Keep Landscape Insects Out of Your House
- How to Control Common Insects in the Landscape
- Get Rid of Common Plant Pests with Lawn Buddies
How does landscaping invite pests? Watering too much attracts moisture-loving bugs. Overgrown plants and piles of messy lawn debris are perfect homes for pests. Dark, damp mulch attracts insects, too.
Keep reading to learn more about common landscape insects.
How Does Landscaping Invite Pests?
There are four big factors, says Dillon Beardall, a manager at Lawn Buddies: too much water, overgrown plants that are too close to the house, mulch and piles of yard debris.
He walks us through it:
Wet Landscaping
“Many pests love cool and damp environments, and most people overwater whatever plants are in their plant beds, so this creates the perfect habitat,” Beardall says.
“Overwatering a lawn can bring other insects as well,” he says. “When lawns get too wet, you'll have more mosquitos because it provides a good environment for them.”
Don’t overwater, he says. Landscape insects might love it, but your landscaping doesn’t need watering every day.
Consider installing a smart irrigation system that automatically waters just the right amount at the right times. No more overwatering.
“Drip irrigation can help instead of spray heads hitting an entire bed,” Beardall says.
Drip irrigation drips water slowly from holes in tubing installed just below ground or on the soil surface. Unlike irrigation heads, which spray large areas, drip irrigation systems target your plants, strategically delivering water straight to their roots for efficient watering.
Overgrown Plants
How does landscaping invite pests? When it’s overgrown.
Plants grow fast, especially in summer, and they can quickly get overgrown.
“It's important to keep areas around the house clear,” Beardall says. “Try not to let things get overgrown. Make sure the landscape is clean and maintained.”
Do plants near your house make insects worse? They can.
If you hire perimeter pest control services (more on that in a bit), overgrown plants are a pain for the technicians trying to do their job, Beardall says.
“It’s hard to treat for insects in those areas because the plants are blocking the areas where it’s most crucial to treat.”
If you’re having trouble keeping up with your landscaping care, consider hiring a service to keep your yard under control.
Lawn Debris
“Piled up leaves and sticks that just get left in the beds for long periods of time, those are like heaven for landscape insects,” Beardall says. “It’s important to not let that build up for long periods of time.”
Does landscaping make bugs worse? If it’s messy, it does. Aim for a 5-foot radius around your home that’s clear of all outdoor debris to help keep common plant pests out of your house.
“These are all the normal good practices that you want anyways,” Beardall says, “but sometimes things just get away from us and we let things slide. But these things can definitely lead to insect and pest infestations.”
Dark, Damp Mulch
We love mulch as much as you do, but it does attract landscape insects to your landscaping. Earwigs and centipedes, especially, are big mulch fans. And spiders.
Mulch provides that dark, damp environment that insects love, holding in moisture. And it’s a haven where bugs can hide from their predators, like birds. What’s not to love about mulch?
But if you don’t use mulch, that’s a problem, too. Mulch is great.
Without mulch, unsightly weeds will creep in and take over.
Bare soil dries out quickly in the sun and wind, leaving your plants dry and thirsty.
Rain will wash away your soil, leaving your plants’ roots exposed to scorching sun and drying winds.
And we all know how great mulch looks out there, adding a tidy, uniform appearance to your beds.
Do you have to choose between mulch and bugs? Nope. Pair that mulch with perimeter pest control to enjoy the benefits of mulch while deterring common plant pests from entering your house.
What Are Common Insects in the Landscape?
There’s a whole battalion of bugs out there, feasting on leaves, laying eggs in tree bark, sucking sap and carrying diseases that can kill your plants.
Just a few of the bad guys:
- Aphids
- Spider Mites
- Centipedes
- Earwigs
- Boxelder Bugs
- Ants
- Japanese Beetles
- Scale
- Borers
Not all plants are susceptible to all of these pests. Proper identification can help you treat the bugs you need to worry about, without overdoing harmful pesticides in your yard.
Where Do Bugs Live in the Landscape?
You name it. On plants. Nestled in your mulch. In leaf piles. In tall grass. Buried in the soil. Hiding in wood piles. In standing water.
Bugs are everywhere out there.
Landscape Insects Can Damage Your Plants, Too
Insects out in your yard aren’t just trying to get into your house. Some are way more interested in devouring your plants. Who are the main plant-munching villains?
Aphids pierce the leaves and stems of plants, sucking out the fluids. Then they leave a sticky substance behind that attracts other hungry bugs. Don’t think you have aphids? You do. Everybody does. They're the most common landscape insects found on trees, shrubs and plants here in Idaho.
Scale suck sap from trees and shrubs, causing leaves to wilt and stopping your plants from growing.
Spider mites are so tiny you can barely see them. Don’t be fooled. They gather in big colonies, mostly on the underside of leaves. Then they pierce the leaves of your trees and shrubs and suck up the plant fluids.
How to Keep Landscape Insects Out of Your House
Once common plant pests are hanging out in the plants and shrubs in your landscaping, it’s pretty easy for them to make their way into your house.
Perimeter pest control in Boise and Idaho Falls
makes it significantly more challenging.
Lawn Buddies technicians apply this outdoor barrier spray around the perimeter of your home and yard to keep landscape insects from making their way inside.
Technicians typically treat about three feet up on the house and six feet out, creating a wide protective barrier around the house that includes the landscaping and lawn directly around your home.
The spray leaves a residue on surfaces that kills insects and continues to work for about three months.
Once those three months have passed, you’ll want another treatment, depending on the time of year. From spring through fall, landscape insects are lurking here in Idaho.
How to Control Common Insects in the Landscape
Does landscaping make bugs worse?
Yes, your pretty trees, plants and shrubs do attract insects. It’s what they eat and where they often lay their eggs.
But that doesn’t mean you should rip out all your plants. That’s not cool.
A plant health care program offers sprays, injections, and technicians with skills and training to use them. Bye, bugs. No more all-you-can-eat buffet.
What bug-battling services does a plant health care program include?
Foliar Spray Kills Landscape Insects
Foliar treatments is a science-y way to say technicians spray plant leaves with insecticide. When insects come in contact with it, they die.
Spray treatments three times a year will zap any aphids crawling on your trees and shrubs and stop bugs from eating your plants.
It’s a lot easier to prevent common landscape pests than to treat them after they show up.
Miticide Targets Spider Mites
Miticide is a product specifically designed to kill spider mites. You need this because other insecticides don’t kill this pesky pest.
Spider mites look like insects, but they’re actually a type of arachnid — relatives of spiders, ticks, and scorpions. So you need a miticide specifically designed to kill mites.
Dormant Oil Suffocates Bugs and Their Eggs
Horticultural oil, also called dormant oil, kills damaging insects that love to lay eggs in your trees and shrubs. It suffocates landscape insects and insect eggs that have overwintered on trees and shrubs so the eggs won’t hatch in the spring.
Plant health care specialists start spraying trees here in Boise and Idaho Falls in early to mid-March, coating the leaves and spraying dormant oil into cracks and crevices in the bark where insects have laid their eggs.
Tree Injections Treat Insect Infestations
Tree injections stop bugs from eating your plants
by delivering the products that kill them directly into the tree trunk, so they work fast as they spread throughout your tree’s vascular system.
These injections treat infestations of borers, aphids, spider mites, and scale and they do it fast.
More good news: tree injections just require one treatment and last for a whole year.
Get Rid of Common Plant Pests with Lawn Buddies
If you have landscaping, you have common landscape pests.
Some are devouring and damaging your plants, shrubs and trees and laying their eggs there so a whole new generation can feast.
Others are lurking in your mulch and clinging to the undersides of leaves, looking for a way to skitter inside your house.
Battle them all with Lawn Buddies.
Both Perimeter Pest Control and Plant Health Care Services can be added for our Idaho Falls and Boise customers who use our full-service lawn care program.
That gives you extra peace of mind — choose an Idaho Falls or Boise professional lawn care service that bundles your yard’s most-needed treatments into one convenient, no-fuss plan, plus know landscape insects will get the boot.
Got a few minutes? That’s all you need to get started. Just fill out the form on this page, call us at (208) 656-9131 or read more about our services. Then, you can kick back and relax in your healthy, thriving yard.
