Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

market-farming - [Market-farming] flea beetles vs. eggplants

market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Market Farming

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Leigh Hauter <lh AT pressroom.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Market-farming] flea beetles vs. eggplants
  • Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 18:27:21 -0500


I have found, I think, in the annual flea beetle attempt to devour baby eggplant fight a solution.

We usually put out between 600 and 1000 various eggplants. We grow them through plastic mulch with no uncovered ground in between the rows. In other words a big wide area of ground covered with plastic mulch.

Apparently, the flea beetles do not live on the eggplants, they only go there to eat. They must live in the soil or on other plants. With the large swath of plastic the only plants that get eaten are the ones on the edges, and if you put an extra row of plastic around the eggplants, little flea beetle damage.

Now that said we lost 200 plants last year, 200 plants that we planted separate from the others (a type of Asian eggplant) there were only several rows and the plastic covered area wasn't as wide as usual, or as wide as our other eggplants. The small patch was quickly eaten to the nubs. Apparently, there is a certain amount of mulch that flea beetles will cross to eat eggplant and a certain distance they won't cross. If I wasn't just doing practical farming I would probably do an experiment.




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page