Colorado Potato Beetles

Back in March I planted Yukon Gold potatoes at the bottom of the lower left bed and Red Cloud Hybrid beets at the top. This weekend I finished off the bed by sowing squash in 2' mounds, tucking some extra eggplant between the mounds. Marigolds fill in the empty spaces to help protect against insects.



As it turns out, marigolds do not help protect against this nasty insect, the Colorado Potato Beetle, identified at its larval stage by its reddish brown ribbed body, black head, and pair of dark spots down either side of the body.



According to every article I've read, the Colorado Potato Beetle is a nasty little bugger that quickly builds up resistance to pesticides and will defoliate potatoes, tomatoes and peppers in a short amount of time. Thankfully, my potato beetles are still in the stage 1 larval period, and have not caused much damage.

The small holes in the leaves are from flea beetles, which don't eat a whole lot compared to potato beetles. The potato beetles, on the other hand, join forces with their newly hatched siblings to tear down any potato plant in range!



They do the most damage in their stage 4 larval form, which I am trying to keep them from reaching. Since I have just a single 10' row of potatoes, manually squashing them to control the population shouldn't be a problem. I'll have to keep an eye on the tomatoes too, because I certainly don't want them setting their sites on other plants!

Squoosh

Any time we dig in the yard, we find plenty of Japanese Beetle larvae. Not only are they disgusting little things, but they evolve into even worse creatures - bugs whose sole purpose in life is to destroy the plants we hold dear. Note that this is not my hand. I would never touch one of these things ungloved.



Around this time of year, the larvae are just starting to form their outer shell, so they can still be squeezed easily between a pair of gloved fingers and put out of their dirty misery. This weekend, as I was digging out a new flower bed, I squeezed a dozen or so larvae then tossed them onto the hot pavement for good measure - there's no surviving that! The larvae got their revenge on me though when I became careless while issuing the ultimate penalty and the "juice" hit me square in the face. It was so disgusting. I'm glad I was wearing sunglasses. Their justice was short-lived as I decided to just stomp them from that point forward.