Mission
Our mission is to support growers in creating and maintaining successful biological control programs in their unique growing environment. We provide quality beneficial insects and microbial solutions for the professional grower, farmer and to the green industry.
We provide a carefully curated array of the most useful beneficial insects available, and combine this approach with biological products that are synergistic with your goals to reduce chemical inputs in your operation.
Dig Into Your Crop Details
Take a closer look at just a few of the crop systems we can assist you with. This just scratches the surface, so ask our team if you don’t see your specialty crop.
At Spokane Community College Greenhouse, we strive to produce the highest quality plants while implementing biological pest control. We grow hundreds of different crops within a total of 6000 square feet. We rely on Sound Horticulture for supplying controls that we can rely on. The staff is always very helpful determining which choices are best for a specific IPM. After several years, our greenhouses have become healthier and customers truly appreciate the efforts of our decisions.
Sound Horticulture is not only an excellent company, but a very knowledgeable resource. They provide high-end products at reasonable prices. We as a business can always rely on the Sound Horticulture team to provide our shipments on time every time. They’ve helped me combat and exterminate russets mites, one of the hardest pests to get rid of in cultivation. Hands down the nicest and most professional group doing pest management. I would recommend this company until I’m blue in the face.
In Harmony Sustainable Landscapes and I have been associated with Alison for over 20 years. She introduced us to the Compost Tea systems in the beginning and since then has been an amazing source of information and products. I have never met anyone as passionate and compassionate about the earth and all of its inhabitants. Sound Horticulture is the best source of information, materials, and help to understand the steps for the best results in the horticultural business. Alison and her team are amazing.
What was your New Year’s resolution for 2022? Perhaps it was to be more consistent with monitoring for pests in your grow?!
Monitoring is critical to developing a successful IPM program as it will help inform you of your pest type, severity, hot spot location, temporal patterns, efficacy of current IPM protocols, and more!
As growers prepare for the busy season, let us know if you need to stock up on monitoring supplies! We have plenty of products at the ready from sticky cards to scopes to stakes and more! If we don’t have what you need, let us know and we may even be able to get it for you 🌷
“the first rule about mite club is don’t talk about mite club!”
Got to see a couple Stratiolaelaps scimitus predatory soil mites wrestling over their snack, a less than fortunate Tyrophagus mite.
Many of our beneficial mites come packed with a food source like Tyrophagus mites so that they can better survive the packing and shipping process and get to work right away on your pests when applied!
If you are ever doing a quality control on your beneficial insect products and you see something that looks different than the predator mites, it’s likely a Tyrophagus mite (or whatever other food source is included for that specific product). Don’t be afraid, mites have to eat too!!
Mites seen here are from the good folks at Applied Bio-nomics (@goodbugsworkhere), available for order from soundhorticulture.com or through the shop directly by phone!
It may be couple days late for the creepy-crawly Halloween posts, but the cooler weather brought by the start of Autumn also marks a shift in many growers’ beneficial insect selection!
As temperatures settle down into the 40°F range in many locations, growers treating for Vine Weevil may consider switching to Steinernema kraussei from nematode species they use throughout the warmer months like S. feltiae and S. carpocapsae (the species in this video). New research suggests that S. feltiae may have a better tolerance to cold than previously understood, however this is yet to be published in any peer-reviewed journal.
In any light, it is always important to make sure that you are choosing the right beneficial for your current environmental conditions!
Everybody knows about great entomopathogenic fungi (EPF) pesticides like PFR-97 and BioCeres WP, but do you know how they work?
Well it actually can depend on the product! Beauvaria bassiana and Isaria fumosorosea, the fungus species in BioCeres WP and PFR-97 respectively, both introduce asexual fungal spores known as “blastospores” that proliferate inside the insect pest and grow within the hemolymph (insect blood) to kill the insect.
PFR-97 applies these blastospores directly to the insect, but BioCeres WP apply them via fungal structures known as conidia. Conidia are non-motile spores that form germ tubes to insert blastospores into the cuticle of pest insects.
Conidia products like BioCeres tend to be more stable in the environment but will take longer to infect the pest (~8-10 hours) whereas blastopore products are less stable but quicker to infect (~6 hours).
Head to our website or give us a call to purchase or learn more about these products, and more!
Robber flies are another naturally occurring friend to keep an eye out for in your garden. They typically eat flying insects by chasing them down and injecting a paralyzing toxin with their beaks. Once paralyzed, digestive enzymes allow the robber fly to suck the juices out of their catch.
These aphids on tomato leaves were sprayed with Velifer, a mycoinsecticide. The product can be used to target aphids, twospotted spider mites, whiteflies, mealybugs, and thrips. The carrier material for the fungal spores is sunflower oil, and it readily mixes into water for application through your spray equipment.
Give us a call or email if you’d like to learn more about this biological spray option.
PC: Alec Blume
There are over 5000 different species of spider in the family Salticidae, commonly known as jumping spiders.
They usually do not live more than about a year, but some species can live longer in cooler climates. At night, they hide in small spaces in the vegetation. To communicate, some species will dance with each other in courtship rituals.
Jumping spiders are visual hunters, and hunt most often during the day. They pounce on and eat all sorts of insects and invertebrates. These little friends can contribute to your natural biocontrol if you let them!
PC: Alec Blume
Have you seen these on your plants before? They kinda look like a scale insect, but they are actually Oxalis seeds! The seed pods will launch a series of projectiles (seeds) when disturbed. The mechanism is described as similar to a catapult.