Organic Insecticide for Potato Beetle & Others
 

I have some very fun/rare potato breeds (regular, purples and pinks) that the potato beetles are loving. I have read that the beetle is hard to kill and in addition, I need a general organic inseceticide for my garden over all because something especially loves my spinach and eggplants. I know there are some recipes for organic insencticides and there are some on the market, but which ones actually work?

THANKS!!

Having fairly good luck with Diatomaceous Earth here, just have to re-apply after rain (which isn't happening right now <sigh>).

DE sprinkled liberally around the base of plants is one thing that most organic gardeners use. Don't do the leaves...reason: the destructive beasts usually have to crawl up the stem to get to the tasty leaves...so they will go through the DE. The beneficial insects (which will also be killed by DE) generally FLY to the leaves and flowers..so if you do the soil area, they won't be affected.

There are pyrethrin based insecticides that are organic. Also plain old diluted dish soap works really well. My grandmother swore by it.

Guineas! We haven't had a potato beetle in 3 years since we got our guineas. :) We used to hand pick them, go down early morning or late evening and they are easy to pick off. We just collect them in a jar of water to kill them.

This worked for me,,one spraying and wiped them CPB's out. http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-6468-mo...og-16-oz-.aspx

They will not ship in Canada. Wonder why?

Looks like it's commercial operations only in Canada? That's allowed to use spinosad, that is.

IF you need to badly enuff, and IF you can find it, rotenone will do what you are asking. Sorta the organic version of nuking bugs; it will kill bees.

BT, Neem- Both sprays are available commercially now.

Well that sucks!

If it's a worm-BT. If it's a bug-Seven.Dish soap works mixed with water and Oil to make it stay on the plant better, just shake while using.

We use DE around the base of the plants and NEEM Oil sprayed on the leaves with a garden sprayer. Works good for us.

Sevin isn't organic and unless you buy a dish soap that is specifically organic, neither is that.

Spinosad works wonders, has some sprays that are USDA organic and is getting a lot easier to find in farm supply/feed stores.

Kids! Growing up we got a mason jar for collecting them and a penny per bug. That was a while back :D so you may have to up the reward a little.

I second neem oil.

A permaculture approach says that most pest problems come from a lack of diversity. So the solution would be to have a bed that is maybe only 10% potatoes and the remailing 90% is 20 other species of stuff.

That is about my percentage. Potatoes are a very small percentage of my crops (everything from onions to herbs).

All mixed up? Or are your potatoes in a row?

Spinsad- you can get from Valley Vet.

They are in rows - for next year, should I mix them in with other veggies?

That is what I would do.

The row thing makes it easy for the pests.

Garlic tea seems t chase off most bugs. It might work on taters.

Doesn't work that way. A single volunteer potato plant right in the middle of some other species is apt to have more potato beetles than those planted in a row.

Doesn't work on potato beetles. The potato beetles don't eat anything and don't care what the plants smell like.

Martin

I am really curious as to Pauls suggestion and your comment on the mixing or plants -vs- row cropping and potato beetles. We have been planting our potatoes in raised beds and rotate their location every year but this year...serious potatoe bugs and Pauls suggestion sounded unique and that it might work...but you sound like you have had experience with it. Why do you say the volunteers or mixed plantings would attract more potato beetles? Is it because the beetles will concentrate on those singular plants?

Since adult potato beetles eat very little, their entire purpose in life is to reproduce. The female normally wants to protect her young by distributing her eggs on a number of plants. Planting potatoes in rows is normal. A female beetle will go from plant to plant and lay a dozen or so eggs on each plant. She may be just a beetle but smart enough to not waste her eggs just because she can't find another host plant. If she can not find another solanum species, she will return to the original plant and lay the rest of her eggs.

Martin

I recently looked into spinoda and find it a very interesting new product. The toxicity to people is low unless it is eaten. The product is bacterial, like BT. It is very expensive. The manufacturer is Canadian. I could believe the reason for Johnny's to not allow shipment to Canada has more to do with the newness of the product and it may be a new formulation not yet approved in Canada. I looked for the concentrate. It cost $925 per gallon. The salesperson did not know how many gallons of pesticide that would make. I am curious if it could be used as the active ingredient in ant bait.

Straight rows of one item, like potatoes, are not natural. I do not believe that doing straight rows of one thing lessens any bug problems, except for the bugs that do not like the thing in the rows. Companion planting seems to be much better. I do not know what the best companions for potatoes would be.

A permaculture approach to coddling moths is to plant things like onions, garlic beneath the fruit trees. That confuses the larvae, so fewer make it to the tree. I have found a similar result with tomato horn worms by surrounding the tomato plants with tomatillos. The nocturnal adult hornworm moth does not lay eggs on the tomato plant for some reason when it is planted among tomatillos (as well as other companion plants).

Gary

Thanks Paquebot, I hadnt thought of what you posted but it does seem like it makes sense. And GoBug, we have done a lot of companion plantings too, i.e., we have Tomatillos planted among our tomatoes, we have planted castor beans along the perimeter of the garden (they are actually also a visually interesting plant as well that grows to the size of a small tree), we have Marigolds interspersed here and there (they look nice too) and of course lots of onion and garlic as you have suggested. We still get some bugs and losses but it seems to be working for us. Our biggest problem is the intrusion of bermuda grass into the garden area..hoeing that is a real chore and in some areas, like our various corn plots, we just let it go once the corn gets high enough and we still get a good yield. One thing we learned quickly...we keep our hoes sharp and we stopped worrying about our gardens looking like something out of a magazine.

What I posted applies to just one single female. Individual plants or small plots don't stand a chance when there are numerous females loaded with eggs. And don't think that tomatoes are safe as those and eggplant are the next choice if potatoes aren't available. If you are growing tomatillos along with tomatoes, be aware that the Colorado potato beetle has a little-known distant cousin called the three lined potato beetle. Their preference is tomatillos but happily also accept any and all solanums. I also have had experience with those little buggers, too. Usually started with someone asking me why they have cucumber beetles on their tomatoes and tomatillos.

Martin

Actually, Martin, it does work that way. It works for those that actually practice permaculture all the time. It works amazingly well. Reliably well.

Paul Wheaton
Certified Master Gardener
Permaculture Instructor

I have seen it numerous times when a single volunteer potato plant is totally covered with potato beetle larvae and it doesn't matter what their companion plants are. You should fully well know that since you also are in an area where a lot of potatoes are grown. Also, if you're just going to grow a single plant among a lot of other varieties, you're not someone who is growing them as a food but just as a hobby. 99.99999% of everyone else who grows potatoes expects to eat them, not just as a novelty.

Martin

Again?

This is so frustrating.

Some folks share information and other folks seem to learn by rejecting new information.

Here is how diversity works .... I'll even use your example: you have that lone plant covered in bugs. The reason it is covered in bugs is that the bugs seem to be having a hard time finding similar plants. So they are staying put. In the meantime, another potato plant 30 feet away is untouched.

bonus: now that that one plant is covered in bugs, it makes it easy for the birds to feast.

The rest of your stuff is just really rude.

Earth to Paul Wheaton, potato beetles and their larvae are bright colors for a reason. They don't taste good and birds don't eat them! My suggestion is that you study up on those creatures before advocating something that doesn't work.

Martin

Everybody, may have your attention please?

Apparently, Martin has problems with potato beetles. Whatever martin is doing appears to attract them and turns into a big problem. Martin's approach to solving his problem is to be rude to people in the hopes that he will learn through being mean.

In the meantime, I have a different approach and have nearly zero problems with potato beetles. Despite being in an area where a lot of people have problems with potato beetles and potato blight.

I have visited hundreds (thousands?) of farms and gardens and worked as a master gardener studying all sorts of approaches. Focusing mostly on organic technique, and those techniques way beyond organic.

Bottom line: it is amazing how folks using a true permaculture polyculture rarely have pest problems. Nature is very good at bringing balance. So if you try to do things in an unbalanced way (like potatoes in monocrop rows or fields) you are gonna hafta prepare to fight nature.

There are many schools of thought beyond polyculture. But that is to be shared only with those groups are can understand the basics. And, frankly, I'm just not interested in going there with so much blatant hostility.

On the contrary, I have seen but a single potato beetle in my home garden in almost a half century. The problem is an area where perhaps only a dozen gardeners grow small numbers of potato plants in a large community garden complex. There is nothing that can be done to eliminate the potato beetles other than total eradication of each one. Allowing even a single pair to survive merely has them back the following year or later in the same season. Planting potato plants 30 feet apart isn't going to stop them. And if there is anything to their liking in between, it would only be their two other primary host plants and those would be eggplant and tomatoes. Having the beetles eat those rather than the potato plants would do nothing but increase the population of them.

It's not hostility, it's facts. Potatoes have been cultivated for thousands of years. Everything about growing them has been very well documented all over the world. Potato beetles evolved on a diet strictly of solanums and everything about them has also been very well documented. Denying those facts mean that everything mankind has learned about both are wrong. I should not think that I'm the only person here who thinks that way. I grow potatoes as if my life depends upon them, not as a novelty in the middle of a flower garden.

Martin

potatoes
 

The best potatoes we ever had were planted in rows between rows of garlic & onions...no beetles!

My main crop of potatoes this year are growing alongside a garlic field. There is a reasonable guarantee that there will be no potato beetles since there were none within at least a mile before. The same lack of a population holds true in my home garden. But once they would ever become established, there are only two methods which can stop them. One is total eradication so that there are none to survive for the following season. The second is to discontinue growing any host plants. A single infested plant is all that is needed to assure that there will be a new generation. That plant may be in the middle of a garlic field and it wouldn't make any difference. If there is a full female in the area, she will find that plant. If she can't find it by walking, she will wait for a strong gust of wind and launch herself from a tall plant to find it on the wing.

Martin

There are very inexpensive applications. A $15 pint goes a long way.

http://www.planetnatural.com/site/mo...en-insect.html

A questions or two for Spinosad might be appropriate. Does the larvae of the potato beetle react to it as other poisons? That is, if they are in their third or fourth instar, they detect poison and simply stop eating and go to pupal stage. Bt, for instance, is only effective during the first two instars. After that, such treatment is mostly ineffective. Is there a second generation of them in the same treated field or area? If so, that's the reason for it.

Martin

I have a question about Spinosad. How does it impact Beneficials?
I have so many mantas, spiders, wasps, ad infinitum, that I'm very leary of any wholesale spraying!
I'm going to have to look into this.

I would have been interested in hearing what you had to say. Sometimes its best to say your peace and let the readers decide. Can't respond to every negative, caustic comment.