The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Janice Blackhurst selects a potted plant at the Sunnyvale Nursery.

Pests Beware

A year of weird weather has brought bugs--and in some gardens, chemicals--out in full force

By Pam Marino

Some of the biggest polluters of local creeks and the San Francisco Bay are getting away with it. For now.

The punishment is accumulating. No one will go to jail or pay fines. The payment will come in less tangible ways.

Who are the culprits? Look in a mirror.

Each year, 40,000 tons of at least 65 different toxic substances make their way into the San Francisco Bay, according to the United States Geological Service.

While much attention has been paid to industrial pollution, with some progress over the last three decades, and although agriculture in the Central Valley has been pegged as a major water polluter, everyday citizens are another major source.

Automotive fluids and the cleaners, paints, fertilizers and pesticides we use are making their way down home drains and storm drains, into the creeks, and finally, to the bay.

State and local officials are finding large amounts of diazinon, a popular outdoor insecticide for ants, fleas and other insects, at the mouth of local creeks--sometimes four times the lethal amount for aquatic life.

The chemical is also showing up at water treatment plants, which means it is going down home drains, either from people throwing out unused portions, or from laundering clothing worn while using it in the garden. Treatment plants are not designed to filter out chemicals like diazinon, which means it flows into the bay.

Diazinon kills algae and larvae, leaving no food for fish. With no larvae hatching, there is less food for birds.

"Creeks are an important place where life is hatched," said Pam Ledesma, a Cupertino environmental programs assistant. "The creeks in the world are the nurseries in the world for wildlife."

While local natural habitats could be seriously impaired, there's another concern, Ledesma said.

"Why do I want to be part of the big experiment?" she said, pointing to the unknown of what harm could befall humans.

To keep the amount of toxic products going down home drains to a minimum, the county sponsors a household hazardous waste disposal program. On Saturday, July 25, the mobile disposal program comes to Cupertino. Reservations are required; call 299-7300.

Controlling runoff is a different problem, however.

The cities of Santa Clara County and the Santa Clara Valley Water District have formed a consortium, the Santa Clara Valley Urban Runoff Pollution Prevention Program. The program is paid for by taxpayers, who pay a storm drain runoff fee each year.

Together the agencies are getting the word out to residents to use nontoxic and less toxic products in their homes and gardens. A big push is going on now, the summertime, when people are doing most of their major gardening chores.

A brochure called "Pests Bugging You?" is available free by calling 800/794-2482. The brochure details "integrated pest management," the term used for using nontoxic controls.

Each individual city has lots of other brochures and handouts available at libraries, community centers and city halls.

The City of Sunnyvale has educators traveling to summer day camps and day care centers teaching children about nontoxic gardening.

"The message that we're getting out is you can go out and garden without chemicals," said Mary Morse, who works for the city's water treatment plant. They remind children--who, in turn, remind parents--that chemicals can be harmful to both people and pets, as well as pollute the Bay.

Some residents have reported a bumper crop of ants, aphids, snails and other pests this year, the result of everyone's favorite scapegoat, El Niño.

"This year the snails and slugs are really prolific," said Sunnyvale resident Dagmar Cechanek.

Local officials and master gardeners said residents don't have to automatically reach for toxic products to contain the pests.

"Being a backyard gardener, I try all the nontoxic controls," said Cechanek, a master gardener for the University of California Cooperative Extension program, which means she has studied and trained to give gardening advice to the public.

Cechanek said she handpicks snails and slugs to get rid of them. Cupertino's Ledesma, an avid gardener herself, said she carries a bucket of soapy water with her in the garden. She drops the snails in; they are killed quickly by the soap. When she's finished, she digs a hole in a corner of the garden and dumps the bucket, snails, water and all, into the hole and covers it up for some free fertilizer.

Ledesma said as satisfying as crunching snails on the ground is for most gardeners, the result is rotting material that attracts unwanted flies.

Both Cechanek and Ledesma said a copper border, available at nurseries and home and garden stores, helps repel snails. It won't repel all the snails, said Ledesma, who uses the border herself in her raised beds, but it does take care of most of them.

Soap is commonly used by many gardeners to get rid of unwanted pests. Cupertino residents and husband-and-wife master gardeners Ralph Riddle and Roxanne Beverstein said two tablespoons of Ivory liquid soap in a gallon of water sprayed on aphids or whiteflies will smother them.

There are a number of insecticidal soaps also on the market that will take care of the insects as well, they said.

Dormant oils, sprayed at the right time of year, are also effective, the two said.

Riddle, Beverstein, and Ledesma all said they try to keep flowering plants year-round in their gardens to attract beneficial insects. Ladybugs, praying mantis and lacewings are predators to bugs that destroy plants.

Beneficial insects and nematodes, organisms that live in the soil, are also available through nurseries and mail-order catalogues.

Even annoying bugs, like ants, can actually be beneficial in the yard; ants eat flea eggs.

Planting certain plants together, called companion planting, is one of the ideas taught by Sunnyvale's education program, said Morse.

Planting marigolds around vegetable gardens is one way to keep aphids and harmful nematodes away, for example. Herbs and pungent plants like onions and garlic also discourage pests.

Attracting birds is another way of controlling insects. The gardeners said they always have water and birdseed out to bring in the birds, who will stay to eat bugs.

The gardeners also advised people to not create habitats for unwanted bugs. Mosquitoes don't need much water to breed, so people should make sure they don't have places in their yards where water can collect for long periods of time, for instance.

The gardeners said these examples prove a big point: the controls are already out there if people respect the balance of life. By spraying chemicals the balance is upset, they said, because chemicals don't discriminate between beneficial insects and harmful insects.

"I just don't like to spray, because once you start spraying, the good bugs will be killed as well," Cechanek said.

The result is a sort of spiraling effect, they said. With no beneficial insects, more harmful insects move in, which leads to more spraying, then more insects, etc.

"We forgot what our grandparents knew," Ledesma said. "You can have a nice garden, be in balance and not use chemicals."

Using chemical fertilizers is part of that spiral, too, Ledesma and others said. Chemical fertilizers produce fast, green growth, but the result can be a weaker root system more susceptible to damage and disease. Overgrowth and weak plants can invite more pests into the garden to feed on the bounty.

The gardeners instead suggested fish emulsion, blood meal, bone meal, and manures as natural fertilizers. Although they do smell, it dissipates within a day or so.

Ledesma is a big proponent of compost, which helps enrich soil. Cupertino offers compost classes free to the public, including non-residents, the first Saturday of every month from 10 a.m. to noon, at McClellan Ranch Park, 22221 McClellan Road.

The effect of the public education about chemicals seems to be taking hold, local nursery people reported. Sales of toxic controls is significantly down; sales of organic controls and fertilizers grow every year.

"Sales have definitely fallen off," Vince Castagnolo of the Sunnyvale Nursery said. He said a wall in the nursery featuring pest control products includes larger and larger sections for nontoxic and less toxic products every year. This year 25 to 30 percent of the wall is devoted to these products.

"That's a hell of a lot more space than I gave it last year," he said.

Ron Kanemoto, general manager of Yamagami's in Cupertino, said he has seen interest in organic gardening come and go over the years, but over the last two to three years the interest has become more serious. He said he believes the change will be permanent.

The pollution runoff program will soon be offering free training to nurseries to teach employees about less toxic products.

Kanemoto said Yamagami's already tells its customers about the products.

Castagnolo said he prefers having a choice, which is why he tells his customers about both chemicals and other alternatives. Some chemicals get a "bad rap," he said.

"There is stuff that is not organic and it's still safe and it works," he said. Sevin dust is one example, he said. "I can't guarantee organics will work every time."

The gardeners agreed that organic products may require a little more diligence, but they said they prefer that to the alternative.

The chemicals that are making their way into the creeks and the bay, possibly combining together to create unexpected results, could one day come back to haunt all of us, gardeners and officials said.

Riddle and Beverstein are active at Cupertino's community garden at McClellan Ranch Park, which is strictly organic.

"We try to raise the consciousness of people down there that what you put in the soil comes back to you," Beverstein said.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, July 15, 1998.
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