If its gluttony is not eradicated, you may be left without a harvest at all. The Colorado potato beetle loves to eat only sprouted cuttings, leaves, and mature tubers.
Many of us resort to chemical means to kill the striped pest. But there are a number of folk remedies that will help exterminate the garden threat no worse than store-bought ones.
Method one:
Fighting the Colorado potato beetle: mustard and vinegar
An infusion of water, mustard and vinegar is very popular among gardeners who prefer to control pests without chemicals. The product is very easy to prepare. Everyone has all the ingredients in their kitchen, and the effect is excellent.
It is important to keep the proportions correctly.
So in a bucket of water (10 l) you need to dilute 150 ml of vinegar 9% and 100 g of mustard powder.
It is better to prepare the mixture while wearing rubber gloves, because vinegar can cause a burn if it gets on your skin. By the way, it is for this reason that vinegar is diluted for processing.
In its pure form, it can cause burns on the leaves. It is important to use the solution no later than 3 hours after preparation.
You can spray it either with spray bottles or the “old-fashioned way” - with a broom.
You need to spray the crop once a week
, and the vegetables will be intact. This solution does not kill beetles and larvae, but it does repel them because they really don't like the smell. And so does the taste.
Method two:
How to get rid of the Colorado potato beetle on eggplants and tomatoes
Many drugs that help eliminate pests in potato beds are suitable for eggplants and tomatoes. One of these is the drug Prestige, produced in the form of a concentrated emulsion, 60 ml in a bottle.
The choice of chemical reagents is quite large. “Intavir”, “Kinmiks”, “Decis”, “Sonnet”, “Karate”, “Artelik”, “Taran”.
All activities related to chemistry must be carried out before the first fruits appear. Then these measures can pose a health threat.
You can do without chemicals. Efforts must be made to preserve the harvest.
Fighting Colorado potato beetles with repellent plants
Although the Colorado potato beetle is very voracious (it can completely destroy a crop in a few days), it is also a picky eater. The striped pest happily feeds on potatoes, tomatoes and eggplants, but at the same time flees from some crops.
We are talking about repellent plants
, that is, those that are natural protection against insects.
If
or
horseradish
and there between the rows , you can create additional protection from insects. Some beetle will still slip through, it will not be possible to protect the garden 100%, but most insects will fly by these seedlings.
Smell is a very effective method of pest control. Therefore, you can plant in bushes those plants that the Colorado potato beetle is afraid of.
for sure.
This can include marigolds, borage
(Burago),
calendula, night violet
(Matiolla two-mounted),
nasturtium
. In addition to their benefits, these plants will give you bright and beautiful bouquets. Your garden will be decorated.
Method three:
other methods
Ways to combat the Colorado potato beetle
To destroy the Colorado potato beetle, nitrogen fertilizer is often used. When using urea, you need to remember that nitrogen causes plants to “fat,” and spraying with a solution with a very high concentration of fertilizer can burn the leaves. Urea from the Colorado potato beetle is diluted in a 1:1 ratio. if you need to spray the tops against larvae. For adult pests, bait is prepared: a glass of urea per 2 liters of water. A kilogram of potatoes is cut into pieces and soaked in the solution for 10-12 hours. After which the pieces are laid out in rows.
Review
In my opinion, urea for the Colorado potato beetle is not a very reliable remedy. Potatoes need to be sprayed too often. And it is washed away by dew and rain, falls into the ground and the bushes grow, instead of forming tubers. And if you spray after flowering, the tubers accumulate nitrates.
Lyudmila, s. Donskoe
Mulching
Among the folk methods, mulching with fresh sawdust is used. In this case, weeds do not grow in potato beds, depriving the Colorado pest of protection from the gardener’s eyes. The smell of fresh pine sawdust repels not only colorados, but also other pests.
Dry onion peel
Another way to prevent the Colorado population from growing on potatoes: pour a handful of dry husks into a dug hole and then put a tuber. Some people have no pests in their gardens all summer, while for others this method does not work.
Powdering
Among the folk methods there is dry dusting of potatoes with dew with sifted ash, cement or gypsum. In reviews of folk remedies of this type, birch ash is indicated as the most effective remedy. For dusting, take 10 kg of ash per hundred square meters of plantings. The colorados and larvae die after 48 hours. But dusting with ash must be done twice a month before flowering. After flowering, the multiplicity is halved.
Dusting with cement or gypsum involves the death of pests as a result of blockage of the intestines by cemented particles.
Such a wide variety of advice on how to fight the Colorado potato beetle using folk remedies suggests that it will be possible to finally defeat it only after the unification of the countries of Eurasia into one state and the simultaneous treatment of all potato plantings.
Fighting Colorado potato beetles with herbal infusions
Here are some options:
- Option 1:
Boil 200 g of garlic peels and crushed garlic heads in 10 liters of water for 2 hours.
Add 30 g of laundry soap to the strained broth. The decoction is ready. Tip: soap is added to the solution so that the product can adhere to the leaves of the plant. - Option 2:
Infuse 10 kg of green leaves and walnut fruits in 10 liters of boiling water for a week. The solution is ready for use after filtering. - Option 3:
300 g of shells and dried walnut leaves, pour 10 liters of boiling water. Leave for 7 days. - Option 4:
Boil 200 g of dandelions and 200 g of horsetail in 10 liters of water for 15 minutes. Can be used immediately after cooling in proportions of 0.5 decoction per 10 liters of water. - Option 5:
leave 1 cup of wood ash and 300 g of crushed wormwood in 10 liters of hot water for 3 hours.
There are other options for decoctions, and there are quite a lot of them. Here are the plants that are easiest to find near your home.
Advice: it is better to spray the prepared decoctions on windless days so that the product remains on the crops. It is also better to carry out these procedures in the evenings. Otherwise, the sun will burn out most of the funds.
Method four:
Folk remedies for the Colorado potato beetle
Folk methods created on the basis of many years of experience of summer residents will help you cope with hated pests. They are based on the use of essential oils, which can be extracted from the above-ground parts of the plant and roots.
Chemicals used in household, culinary and medicinal applications are acceptable.
Fighting Colorado potato beetles with bare hands
This method may be suitable for those who live in close proximity to a garden plot and have enough time. Collecting beetles and larvae with your own hands is a labor-intensive and time-consuming process. Yes, and it is advisable to carry it out either every day, or even twice a day (morning and evening).
To implement it, you just need a bucket of salt solution
. Collected beetles need to be thrown into a bucket so that they do not fly away. It is recommended to remove leaves affected by eggs completely. You should also not shake off insects or crush them on the ground, as many of them survive and return to the plots.
Method five:
How to apply insecticides correctly
Insecticides are used in several ways:
- pickling,
- spraying,
- pollination,
- application to the soil.
If you fight pests with any of them, you need to follow the following rules:
- Purchase certified drugs from trusted places.
- Prepare a solution for treating plants, strictly following the attached instructions.
- Use the resulting substance immediately, avoiding storage for more than two hours.
- The remaining solution must not be poured down the drain; it must be buried in a safe place.
- Insecticides must be stored where children and pets cannot reach.
- Do not mix with other drugs.
- Spray in dry weather in the absence of wind, at dawn or towards sunset.
- Do not use pesticides that have expired.
By following the rules of use, you can destroy the Colorado potato beetle, if not forever, then for a long time.
Fighting the Colorado potato beetle by dusting
This is the easiest way to combat Colorado potato beetles.
Dusting is carried out by applying one or another substance to plants or to the soil between the rows.
Ash is good for dusting. If possible, choose birch. But other ash will also be effective. Dust your plants in the morning while there is dew on them. This way the powder will be more securely attached to the stems and leaves.
Corn flour
It tends to swell, so it will be an ideal option for dusting.
After the pest eats it along with potatoes, tomatoes or eggplants, the flour inside it will swell and the insect will die. Dusting with dry cement
is also very popular among gardeners.
Insects die from consuming this substance. It is useful to sprinkle sawdust between the rows.
Colorado potato beetles do not like the smell of wood and diligently avoid it. In addition, sawdust will be an additional protection against weeds.
Useful trick:
To achieve better results, you can use traps
.
The Colorado potato beetle takes over vegetable gardens with persistence, but it can be defeated with cunning. To do this you will need several small cans and a couple of potatoes
. Several cut pieces of potato are placed at the bottom of the jars, the edges of the neck are rubbed with potato juice. Then the prepared jars are buried in the ground so that the edges of the jars are level with the ground. The beetles will climb onto the bait and fall into the jar. All you have to do is get the traps and destroy the beetles.
Whatever method of combating Colorado potato beetles you choose, alternate it with others. This pest adapts quite quickly to various types of influence, be it chemicals or folk remedies. Therefore, to achieve the best result, use different methods.
Source: Agrospravochnik.ru
What is the best and most effective poison for the Colorado potato beetle?
Biological and chemical methods aimed at exterminating insects help vegetable growers get a healthy and good harvest. They are used when there are large numbers of beetles.
It is important to start with safer, but no less effective methods, leaving chemicals as a last resort when all other methods fail.
In Russia, chemicals are a fairly popular remedy, so the insect was able to develop resistance to this substance. Most of them, about 90%, are pyrethroids and insecticides.
To exterminate an insect population, the following means are chosen:
1. Biological drugs. They do not accumulate in soil or water and have less harmful effects on humans.
- Bitoxibacillin. The use of the product is especially effective when there are large numbers of larvae that grow every week.
- Boverin is a drug of bacterial origin. Shows good results even in damp, cold weather in summer.
2. Chemicals. If the methods do not produce visible results, they resort to more intensive means.
- Nereistoxin “Bankol”.
- Pyrethroids. This group includes: “Intavir”, “Decis”, “Fas”, “Iskra”.
- Neonicotinoids. “Aktara” and “Mospilan” have shown their effectiveness.
- The chitin synthesis inhibitor “Dimilin” destroys small larvae.
Insects live in the ground for up to five years. They fight it every year or two, thereby preventing the development of resistance to poisons. When a population is completely destroyed, a few individuals survive.
The poison will not affect these insects next year. It is necessary to select a new and improved remedy.
