As the temperatures cool across the Pacific Northwest, trees begin to shed their leaves, except for some of those tall evergreens and a family of shrubs, you might be worried about winter insects. The grass isn’t growing as quickly, and many plants are left looking very bare. It almost seems as if everything is gone to sleep until next spring. So if your plants are sleeping and the insects are not visible, do you need to worry about pest control during the winter in your yard?
Do You Need to Worry About Insects in Your Landscape in Winter?
Surprising to many homeowners, is the fact that very few insects leave Washington and fly to warmer climates during the winter. There are some impressive yard visitors that are attracted by warmer weather, like the painted lady butterfly and the Monarch. The green Darner dragonfly, which is the official state insect, spends its winters in California, Arizona, and Mexico, where it can enjoy a nice snowbird winter. But other than a small few migrating species, most of the insects that hang out in your yard stay there all year long.
Just like bears, several insect species actually go into a sort of hibernation mode as the temperatures drop below 40°. At 40°, the muscles are too cold to move, and insects hunker down into a nap-like state until warm temperatures reappear. During the winter, larvae like to burrow underground and into the core of plants. Some other species form cases or cocoons and hide in the soil and vegetation. And those with exoskeletons are a little more prone to standing up too cold, yet they still find warmer spaces in the crevices within your landscape.
The ability for an insect to survive during the winter is their ability to find shelter to keep them warm enough to survive. Finding a spot to shelter and stay somewhat warm is a matter of life and death for Washington area insects. So this is the optimal time to minimize the impact of pests in your landscaping. Controlling garden pests during the winter is an opportune time to more easily mitigate as many insects as possible that do damage to your landscape.
The easiest way to mitigate pests in your landscape is simply to remove plants where they like to hang out. Removing plants that will not come back next spring is a huge way of removing many insects from your property. Instead of letting them just decompose into the landscape, removing them and sticking the waste into those green bins before the service cuts off for winter is optimal.
This is a time when many bugs are burying their eggs in plants and also in the ground around your plants. If you have a vegetable garden, now is a great time to pull out many of the plants to help mitigate a ton of insects that love to make their homes inside old produce-producing plants. The ultimate best way to help mitigate insects from hatching and popping back up in the spring is to clean up as much as possible during the cold months. Make sure to rake up leaves, prune back plants, and deadhead dying areas. Also, pull up entire plants that only bloom for one season. The more you can clean up debris, the better.
If you want to take your yard from great to amazing while involving your family in the process, contact the landscape designers at First Fruits Landscaping. Let’s get started turning your yard into a work of art that not only looks great but also functions well for your lifestyle and provides a pet-safe space for your whole family to enjoy. We provide landscaping services in Snohomish County and King County.