When crops are being attacked by insects, your first line of defense is to identify the insect doing the damage. But with more than 100,000 insects and arthropods in North America, identification isn’t always simple. A new book from a Colorado State University entomologist is a tremendously helpful solution for ecological gardeners and farmers.
Garden Insects of North America: The Ultimate Guide to Backyard Bugs by Whitney Cranshaw is a comprehensive reference work to the insects that can cause problems in food and ornamental gardens. Unlike other entomology books that group insects by genera, Cranshaw’s book groups them by the kind of damage they do: leaf chewers; leafminers; flower, fruit and seed feeders; sap suckers; gall makers; stem and twig damagers; trunk and branch borers; and root, tuber and bulb feeders.
Within each classification are color photos to help you figure out the culprit. Accompanying the photos are several pages of information about each insect or group of insects: hosts, damage, distribution, appearance, life history and habits. A separate chapter covers beneficial insects, with photos of them in their larval and mature forms so that you don’t mistake a good bug for a bad one.
Garden Insects of North America is a large book – 7.5×10 inches, 656 pages – with several thousand color photographs of excellent quality. It is probably the most ambitious guide to insects ever published for non-entomologists, and it pulls together and makes accessible information that was previously available from dozens of sources.
What this guide is NOT is a catalog of pesticide products. A section in the front of the book provides general management principles for most types of garden pests. Although this is not an organic guide to pest control, the approach is ecological and low-input. For example, when insecticides are mentioned, the optimum timing is described. Specific insecticides are not mentioned, however. To get brand names and suppliers, we recommend the annual directory of Least-Toxic Pest Control Products from the IPM Practitioner (Bio-Integral Resource Center, PO Box 7414, Berkeley, CA 94707; 510-524-2567.)
We recommend this book highly, and think it belongs in every farming and gardening library. Although the internet is now a powerful tool for identifying insects pests, this book is faster and more convenient. Its scope makes it more applicable for growers everywhere, too, since most IPM web sites are produced by state Extension agencies and therefore limited to insects occurring in that state.
Garden Insects of North America is $29.95 plus $6 shipping (It’s heavy!) from GFM Books, PO Box 3747, Lawrence, KS 66047; 800-307-8949; www.growingformarket.com