If you have eucalyptus trees in your backyard, chances are it's a newly arrived pest called a lerp psyllid. Take your pick of two different mealybugs, also new arrivals among many other pests. Or maybe it's something less exotic like household ants creeping into your kitchen, snails and slugs slurping up your vegetable garden, or crabgrass colonizing your lawn.
Truth is, some pest is always bugging somebody.
How we deal with these unwanted critters has changed dramatically. At the turn of the century whale oil, arsenic or kerosene may have been utilized. In the 1940s synthetic organic pesticides arrived. UC IPM recently released a new interactive CD-ROM, Solving Garden and Landscape Problems , to help UC Master Gardeners, UC Cooperative Extension advisors and other pest experts find the least toxic management solutions to hundreds of garden and landscape problems. It will be made available to the general public in early 2000.