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 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.
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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 bastards before thay can go into the duck and cover mode. For the "ppotatoe" you could say this is the "nucular" option!
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
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