After enduring one of the coldest December’s on record, there may be a bright side come spring for both farmers and home owners. Stephen Schmidt, plant pest administrator for NCDA in the plant industry division, plant protection section explains:
“The bright side really is true. This time of year when it gets cold, if it stays cold enough long enough some of the populations of insects that we normally deal with will get knocked back somewhat by the cold weather. That doesn’t mean they’ll disappear, it just means that they’ll start out with fewer numbers, and maybe not build up quite so fast as we’ve seen in years where we have really a warm winter.
It’s the kind of thing where we really can’t measure it, unless we’re out specifically running experiments and taking insect counts, but we do get an anecdotal feeling about whether or not populations seem to be growing faster, seem to be bothering us more, in those terms we can get a feeling for what the effect of the cold weather is.”
Schmidt gives some examples of what we might see less of, come spring:
“Well, I think a lot of times what you see is that there maybe fewer ticks, there maybe fewer fleas, you may see mosquitoes won't jump up quite so prominently quite so soon, insects of that kind I think you’re more likely to notice. But, you’ll notice just ‘hey, I don’t seem to be inundated with them bothered by them quite to the degree I was the year before.’”
But, the downside is that there are plenty of pests that can endure this cold weather and then some:
“Certainly, that’s the down side. Even amongst those that I mentioned, there will some that will be hardy enough that they’ll get through and they’ll provide the nuisance that they provide every year.”
Since snow provides insulation against the cold for ground dwelling weeds and insects, certainly some weeds will succumb to the cold weather as well:
“Well, some of them will stay in insulated situations, under leaves and things of that nature. And unfortunately, I don’t really have a good clue as to which ones will be cold hardy and which ones will be affected by the cold, but I'm sure there'll be some of each. And there’ll be some that as soon as the snow melts and you start looking around a little bit this early spring, you’ll see that they’re sprouting as they’ve always done. They seem to be able to weather the storm and come back with strength.”
But, all in all, Schmidt says don’t look for total eradication of insects and weeds:
“I guess at this point don’t be too surprised if you do see these nuisance insects and nuisance weeds in the spring. They are very hardy, over all, and they have great reproductive potential and they are here to stay. We just have to learn to work with them, and we can get a long.”
Stephen Schmidt, plant pest administrator for NCDA in the plant industry division, plant protection section
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