"Biocontrol is not for the impatient grower"

Carnation Instant Breakfast was in vogue while I was growing up in the 1960’s. The milk based wonder-food was sure to get you going in the morning while simultaneously meeting all of your nutritional needs. Carnation’s Instant Breakfast led the way for a generation of consumers who expected “instant” results in life and in the workplace. As a greenhouse grower in the early 1980’s I expected to confront every pest in the greenhouse with a lethal chemical arsenal that was sure to inflict instantaneous death to any pest that creeped, crawled, or fluttered into my greenhouse.

As we moved into the 21st century we knew that there had to be a better way to manage pests as pesticide resistance concerns mounted and our chemical arsenal began to shrink. Biological control became at first a catchword, then a movement, before becoming a mainstream concept within the floriculture industry. While there were early adopters, many growers are still biocontrol dabblers with an uncertain commitment to biological control in the greenhouse.

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