Preventing potatoe beetles
 

I have a garden in an area with many other gardens. Some of the other
folks plant potatoes. In past years my tomato plans have been ravaged
by potato beetles. Are there any ways to prevent them from attacking my
plants in the first place? Organic solutions would be great.

"jshofstra" wrote in news:1117974888.696848.285360
@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

I have a garden in an area with many other gardens. Some of the other
folks plant potatoes. In past years my tomato plans have been ravaged
by potato beetles. Are there any ways to prevent them from attacking my
plants in the first place? Organic solutions would be great.



I got one of those racquet shaped bug zappers a while ago. Total POS
quality, but works fine. Supposed to get 3000 V with 2x1.5V D batteries.
With NiMH @2x1.2V it's not enough to kill a standard house with momentary
contact, unless you get lucky and you blow it in two. However it's enough
to stun it for several seconds, enough time to stuff the body in a envelope
and post to Suriname. You could also put the body back on the racquet for
a few seconds to make sure it's dead. A bug vac might work better if you
can find one.

Anyway knocked off a striped cucumber bettle yesterday. You could probably
do the same with the potato beetles. Collect them, mash them up and inter
them around your plants. Sooner or later some enterprising wag will get
wind and start growing potatoes just for the beetles and pokey folks.

Here are some randomly selected citations:
http://sturmsoft.com/Writing/guide_to-
gardening/recipes_for_alternative_pesticid.htm#Bug%20Juice

or

http://www.countrycaregardens.com/pe...ectcontrol.htm

Leaving dead mosquitoes on your skin doesn't seem to work, but ringing a
pot with aphid corpses may. Perhaps if you can't get rid of the potato
bugs, you can get rid of the potato growers. giggle

Early in the morning you go out with a small propane torch and you
flame the potato beetles and mexican bean beetles and asparagus
beetles.
Enough of a pass to singe the hair on your forearm does them in.
Once singed they do not eat or breed.
Then you look on the underside of the leaves and remove eggs and larvae
with your thumb.
No it doesn't harm the plants, don't burn the place down, and it
catches the little *******s before thay can go into the duck and cover
mode.
For the "ppotatoe" you could say this is the "nucular" option!

jshofstra wrote:
I have a garden in an area with many other gardens. Some of the other
folks plant potatoes. In past years my tomato plans have been ravaged
by potato beetles. Are there any ways to prevent them from attacking my
plants in the first place? Organic solutions would be great.

Even though they had an organic approach to gardening, the original PBS
"Victory Garden" crew sadly admitted that some sort of powder must be
used to control the Colorado Potato Beetle.

On Tue, 07 Jun 2005 11:37:15 -0400, Stubby
wrote:

jshofstra wrote:
I have a garden in an area with many other gardens. Some of the other
folks plant potatoes. In past years my tomato plans have been ravaged
by potato beetles. Are there any ways to prevent them from attacking my
plants in the first place? Organic solutions would be great.

Even though they had an organic approach to gardening, the original PBS
"Victory Garden" crew sadly admitted that some sort of powder must be
used to control the Colorado Potato Beetle.

Not so. I have controlled CPB with the same method for years. It is
a PITA but it works.

Become a CPB predator. At least every other day, (every day is
better) go through your potatoes and hand squish any adults or larvae
that you find. Look under each leaf for the orange eggs and squish
them also.

It gets a bit easier after a few days as there will be no adults or
larvae - you squished them and the eggs that will be them. Now all
you have to do is keep getting those eggs and the number of them is
greatly reduced because you squished the adults.

Where do the eggs come from with no adults around? I ezpect that new
adults fly in from the neighbor's yard, lay their eggs and screw
before the great squisher comes.

John