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Scouting and Pest Management Guidelines for Vegetables in SW Florida
Page 2
In terms of pest management, the most important time of the year may be the two month of summer when there are normally no crops in the ground. This is the time when fields can be cleared of crop residues and left fallow, allowing time for pest populations to dissipate. The summer fallow is especially effective against pests that do not have good weed hosts like tomato pinworm and pepper weevil, or that are controlled effectively by natural enemies as are whiteflies. Even pests that seem able to thrive on weeds often do poorly outside the crop environment due to scarcity or poor quality of plant hosts. Finally, inoculum of most kinds of plant disease is greatly reduced in the absence of susceptible plant hosts. This includes geminiviruses like Tomato
Yellow Leafcurl (TYLCV) which may all but disappear in the absence of tomato and significant whitefly populations.
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