A Healthy Looking Potato Plant.....

.....but the Colorado Potato Bugs are already after them. I've hand picked 15 or 20 per day off my plants for the last several days. Guess I'm going to have to break down and use a spray, I hate to, but you gotta do what you gotta do!

I think potatoes have one of the prettiest foilage of any of the vegs.

That's a pretty nice looking one. Doggone bugs !

Wow, Big Red. That looks great. How long ago did you sow the seed potatoes? Just curious. Mine are still small, but started taking off the last few days. Looking forward to the spuds!

PeggieK, I agree, they're a beautiful dark green when they're healthy.

jenhillphoto, I planted on March 19th, a little early and they came up spotty. I have two more rows that were planted on April 10th, they came up great and are fast catching up with the earlier planting. Got to learn to be more patient!

We nailed the bugs last year by running gloved hands under the leaves to smoosh egg clusters. Didn't have much problem. Neem helped.

Zeppy,

Not sure that would work for me, I have seven 65' rows. ☺ I picked up a new potato beetle spray that supposed to kill the larva. When they feed it gives them a stomach ache so they quit feeding and starve to death. So far I haven't found anything other than the adult beetle, no eggs as yet.

Hee, hee. Yeah, I can see where that might get a bit tiresome. That's a lot of potatoes! I do hear that the Bt works really well on them... sounds like that's what you're using. I'm using a different strain for mosquito larvae this year. Fingers crossed...

What potatoes are you growing?

Kennebec, it's a great all purpose potato.

We don't have a mosquito problem here. I'm pretty much surrounded by fields and very little water. If you swat three in an evening outside, it's a lot. When I lived in NH you couldn't go outside in the evening, they'd carry you off! Just swarms of them! Makes me itch just thinking about it.

This site from the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service on organic control options for the colorado potato beetle looks interesting:

http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/coloradopotato.html

Please let us know the results if you try any of these options.

The bacillus thuringensis san diego strain is very effective on CPBs, particularly if you can catch them in the larval stage. It is organic and won't harm your beneficial insects.