Hello Gardeners,
Colorado potato beetles: The potato beetles are now more abundant and beginning to cause some damage to plants. You may have seen some adults on your potato plants, but many plants are just hosting eggs right now. This is a great time to check your plants and destroy the eggs before they hatch. Due to the colder weather, they are not hatching very quickly, so this is a good opportunity. Once the eggs hatch, plants can be quickly defoliated if there are many larvae.
Potato beetles will eat anything in the Solanaceae family, including tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and tomatillos. They especially like tomatillos, as I just learned. So, if you are growing tomatillos you may want to check those for beetles and eggs also.
The link below from the University of Minnesota Extension has some good pictures of the beetles at each stage of life. Please remember that only organic control methods are allowed in Eagle Heights and the A and B rows of University Houses. The gardens sometimes spray Spinosad to control them, but it is too early to consider that.
Workday opportunity: There will be a group workday at Eagle Heights Gardens this Sunday 6/12 from 1:30-4:30 pm. The work crew will be weeding the blackberry and raspberry patches with a garden worker. We will need 15 volunteers. Please email me if you’re interested and I will assign spots in the order people reply. There is a chance of rain on Sunday, so if the garden worker has to cancel the workday we will reschedule.
Thanks, and happy gardening,
Lily
No comments:
Post a Comment