"lrs" wrote in message ...
I have a beetle going after my oregano and spearmint. It leaves black
spots on the leaves, and now the leaves seem to be drying up and
dying.

The bug is about the size of a ladybug, but thinner. It is mostly black,
with two longitudinal yellow stripes on each wing, and the head is
orange-red.
It seems to have a diamond shaped black patch on its rear end, but
that may be the wings sticking out. It looks like pictures I found of a
striped
cucumber beetle, but the descriptions are a little different. I have
tomatoes, peppers, parsley and lemongrass nearby, but it seems to
be leaving them alone.

What is this pest and how can I get rid of it, preferrably with an organic
method.

Thanks very much,
Leona

We've had something that sounds similar attacking our basil. Our best
candidate for the culprit is the "four-lined bug," or maybe a relative
of it: http://ppdl.org/dd/id/4-lined_plant_bug.html. All the sites I
found via google recommended treating infested plants with various
pesticides, which we didn't want to use in general, and certainly not
on our kitchen garden. Hubby has instead adopted the "pick and
squish" method of treatment with positive results, and the basil seems
to be bouncing back nicely.

HTH