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  • From: "Jill Taylor Bussiere" <jdt AT itol.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Potato Pest HELP!
  • Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 12:43:54 -0500

Are the bugs you describe the younglings of the potato beetle?  They sound like it - have you seen them before?
 
I have found hand picking to be succesful in the past, too - and I, like you, have found that potato beetles do not eat blue potato plants as readily as they do the non-blue kinds.  My friend gave up on growing potatoes because of potato bugs (she grows in the same place each year -small garden) and I recommended that she take some of my blue potatoes left from last year - she did, and reports a successful crop.
                                        Jill
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2003 12:27 PM
Subject: [Market-farming] Potato Pest HELP!

I walked out this morning to turn on the water to find my Rose Finn Apple Fingerling Potato plants being ravaged once again by a pest that I cannot seem to identify to save my soul....so I am hoping that someone here will know what it is....

The bugs are reddish brown in color. They have a double row of about 7 raised dots on the edge of either side of their body. They are soft and rather thick and have no wings. They have 6 legs (3 on either side) toward the front of the body. The head is mostly black with 2 very short antennae. There is a black stripe around the point where the head joins the body. I found them congregating on the leaves in large groups and they leave a black sticky tar in their path. They range in size from 1/16" to about 1/2". I found a few on the All-Blue Potatoes which are just beginning to produce new potatoes. There were none on the Caribe Potatoes which I have been harvesting off of for about a month. The Rose Finn's have only begun flowering about 2 weeks ago and I have not begun to harvest from them yet. Earlier in the season, the Rose Finn's survived a major Potato Beetle attack which also did not effect the Caribe's or All-Blues. There has never been anything else grown on the ground where the potatoes are growing.

For now, I have hand-picked most of the unknown bugs that I could find (my Geckos and Ducks are enjoying them immensely). I will apply another layer of thick mulch today and hope that with another day or two of hand-picking they will be gone. This strategy worked extremely well with the potato beetles so until I hear otherwise I will try this with these pests as well.

I think that next year I will skip the Rose Finn's. The Caribe's have wildly outperformed my expectations and the All-Blue's are the first thing gone at market! Thanks in advance for the help.

Shelly Elliott
Idle Thyme Farm

www.IdleThymeFarm.com




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