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  • From: "Ken Bezilla" <kenbez AT hotmail.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Rotenone and flea beetles
  • Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 23:10:11 +0000

I'm trying to get away from using rotenone, due to its potential hazards to humans. (For example, a study showed that rotenone can cause symptoms like Parkinson's disease in mice.) But I'm not sure of what to use as an alternative for flea beetles.

In our area, flea beetles are pretty vicious to eggplants. Given the chance, they'll kill young eggplants. Our strategy for coping has usually been to plant out large (4.25" rootball) eggplant seedlings, dust them with rotenone, keep them under row cover until flowering, then remove the row cover, and as needed dust the eggplants one or two more times to keep down the flea beetle population.

I'm not sure what else I could use. I've thought of trying kaolin clay (I think Janet's tried this), but since it would only disguise the eggplants from the flea beetles instead of killing the flea beetles, it'd be labor intensive to keep the eggplants continually covered with kaolin all summer... Alternatively, I could try some liquid spray such as neem, but I don't know if that'd last as long as the rotenone powder... any ideas?

Ken Bezilla
East Wind
southern Missouri

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