Growing Potatoes

Over the past three years we have tried our best to be green with growing potatoes, attacking the dreaded potato beetle with our bare hands. Chris would get out and hand pick the bugs from the potatoes, not wanting to kill the praying mantis babies that we hoped would get the job done. Sometimes he would pick potato beetles for an hour, counting and one day catching more than 600 bugs over several hours, only to see more coming onto the plants later that evening. A single bug can easily destroy a plant in a day, so imagine what just a hundred could do!

One of the problems with potato beetles is that the larva is underground where you may not notice them until they emerge from the ground as fully developed bugs with voracious appetites. Our solution? Imidocloprid, sold as Nuprid. Treating the soil seems to be effective, halting the development of the larva in the early spring, prior to planting potatoes. The potato crop is coming along really well without the lacy leaves associated with bug damage.

We'd rather be green about our veggies, so if anyone has a practical solution for potato beetles, please pass it on! I hear ducks eat them and we have some ducks that go into a feeding frenzy when they see a cricket so what would they do in an infested potato patch? I have to wonder!