ot- potatoe bug...

Lots of posters seem to be growing tomatoes...what are you using to kill off the lil' beetle that seem to be munching down the leaves on mine? so many on 'em you'd think the leaves were brown!
Sevin? ?

Colorado Potato beetle? Does the adult have yellow stripes and is the larve red? If so, there is little you can do. Sevin probably won't touch them. They are highly adaptable to most sprays. My spray information is out of date, but my parents used a restricted pesticide called Pounce a few years ago. That will work for one season, the following year they moved the crop to a different location. I think there is also a spray called Safer, it is basically a soap that suffocates the bug.

If they are Japanese beetles they will have a shiny greenish tint and Sevin will take care of them without issue.

Good luck.

definitely not Jap Beetles- i fight that battle every year and win it wit GrubX before thecome outta the ground.
The are lil' brown f-ers ...I don't see any stripes but my eyes are pretty poor.

The larvae of Colorado Potato Bugs are orangish brown with two rows of black dots down the side. See the pic.

I try to minimize the chemicals I use; I did battle with fingers, then a cordless vacuum. That actually worked well for a while (small patch, took me about 10 minutes to go through).

But I got busy with work, couldn't get to it for a couple weeks and the population took off and a few of the plants where approaching 40% leaf loss. Some rotenone took care of them nicely before the larvae pupated.

Carbaryl (Sevin) is also recommended. Might be a good idea to be ready to switch year-to-year if you don't see one being that effective.

I'm including a link to Cornell.

http://counties.cce.cornell.edu/suffolk/HortFactSheets/factsheets/Colorado 20Potato 20Beetle.pdf

Yup, those pictured are the Colorado Potato Bug.
They have been a scourge here in potato country. They are probably immune to most insecticides known to man, as they have probably all been used far too much, and often. (Remember, only the suvivors survive to reproduce again.) I try to keep them in control by manual means as long as possible, then hit them with a cocktail of insecticides, when I can no longer control them in my small patch. Commercial growers are aerial spraying every few days with combinations of stuff us common gardeners can't even begin to get. Requires permits to apply.

Buddy of mine one time had a patch where he had potatoes the year before and tried contolling them with Sevin. Next spring the ground was crawling with them as he was working the ground. He put in about 1/2 acres of tomatoe plants and by the next day everyone was eaten to the ground by those things. I have a couple of rows in my garden of potatoes and the only thing that works for me is to hand pick them. I put a splash of gasoline in the bottom of a 5 gallon pail and knock them into the pail. Even the adults die within seconds. You have to go over the plants every few days as you can miss some and more can hatch. If you see a yellow egg mass under the leaves you can get them before they hatch.

Those little brown bugs hatch from yellow eggs laid on underside of the leaves by striped adults.Tomatoes peppers and egg plant are eaten after the potato leaves are stripped.4% rotenone will kill them,weaker 2% wont.There is a pesticide that works but it costs 500.00 per gallon.I bought a pint from a potato farmer for 60.00, it lasted 5 years.Its called Admire and is cleared form many other crops now.On small patches picking the adults works well.

that's them!

Admire works but Southern States told me it had been taken off the market.I paid 75 dollars for it about 4 years ago.

My wife just told me about a plant called Nicotiana. Basically it is a bait plant that attracts the beetles. The down side of the plant, is that it won't kill them and they survive to reproduce.

I have always liked the 2-rock system. Need to be wary of the bugs that survive that method...

Here is a little experience we have had here in the last year.

Over a period of several years we had a gradual increase in the numbers of 'white butterflies' around our gardens. It got so bad that it was almost impossible to grow any cabbage family crops in the springtime.

Last spring, we planted about 3k square feet of rape. When it was fully grown early in the summer, you should have seen the white butterflies all over that patch. There must have been up to 30 or 40 at any one time. When I was sure that they had committed their eggs almost exclusively to that plot, I dusted it twice with dipel dust, one week between each dusting. After that we grazed sheep through there. When there had been some regrowth, we fenced 600 chickens in there with some electric net fencing. After four days, all that was left of the rape was short stumps.

This was completely an experiment and I didn't know at all what might happen. Well, this spring we had MUCH less trouble with these pests. I have seen a few white butterflies, but never two together. There has been some damage to some of our cabbage family crops, but nothing serious. By the way, we have an acre of market garden, and right now we have several hundred individual cabbage family plants growing, so something really has changed.

My point is, perhaps setting up a trap crop will help to control these potato beetles. If they are resistant to sprays, this could be a problem. Perhaps plowing them UNDER when there are enough there might help. I don't know very much about their life cycle to say where their weak points are. We have quite a few of these bugs and we hand pick them every few days. It is a nasty job, but then I've had much worse jobs and it is a good education for my children, who are expected to pull their own weight. So far no serious damage except to a few potato plants which might have had other problems anyway. We are already selling new potatoes and the crop looks like it could be our best in several years (I knew I would eventually see the bright side of all the rain this spring.)

Hope this little book I've written helps.

Christopher

Not to get political, but I remember we used to have a Vice-President that spelled potato as "potatoe" and they made him stop being our veep for it. Come to think of it, I don't know what that guy's doing anymore. Maybe he went back to being a teacher somewhere here in Indiana. It's 3:15AM here and I woke up, can't sleep. Maybe I oughta call that guy and ask him how's things going? Maybe he can't sleep either. Grin.

Come to think of it, I haven't seen a potato bug in some years. Quit seeing them before I quit seeing honey bees now that you brought it up. Now if my cellphone chased my honey bees away, so I hear, what do you suppose chased my potato bugs away? I never heard an explanation on that one.

Mark

Nasty horrible things. Sevin wouldn't touch them in our patch 2 years ago.
We resorted to manual methods lst year. Feed the grubs to the chickens and smoosh the eggs under the leaves.

I know this information is a little late, but before you plant next year check into getting a product called Admire. You spray it in the row before covering the potatoe slices. No more potatoe bugs!

Don't laugh! But I am using a shotgun to shoot those butterflys. They are harder to hit than clays the way they flutter around. It has been cool here lately. I have only shot 4 so far. I load my own with #9 shot. I can't find any # 12 or I would use that. I used to let the brown ones go, but I heard those are the cutworms, so I will be after those too.

The seed catalogs sell a product called BT. It tends to slow them down. You have to spray often to get them when they are small. After they are half grown it doesn't seem to do much good.

I understand how you feel, but you got to admit that it is funny in a kind of Looney Toons sort of way. I have been guilty of chasing them all the way across the field trying to swat them with my cap. I've even thrown rocks and such at them. Yeah, they sure have good reflexes.

Christopher

Bayer is still running a web site on Admire.