Potatoe bug control system I use.

[propane1]

Guaranteed dead potatoes bugs. No Beepin around. Much faster than squishing. Residential chemicals don’t work. I’ve tryed those and made up my own mixtures, just wasting my time. So the torch is the answer. Just snap the trigger then just as fast let it off. Less than a second of heat does them in. I’ve killed thousands and thousand of potatoe bugs in the last number of years. I had thought of chickens in patch, but don’t know much about the lookin after them, and the town by laws won’t let ya have them any way, I think.
Sit on tractor and do a slow drive while cultivating and killing the bugs. Or just drive the tractor, or walk though. I some times take the hoe with me to do the weeds on the hills. While killing the bugs.
What are your methods. ?

There’s my ramble for today.

Noel

[Eugen]

Last year when we planted potatoes I just killed as many as I could, squashed them. I know some people throws them in a soapy water solution, they die in that.

[propane1]

Well I don’t know the rate at which they come in your area Eugen, but around here, easily kill 300 to 500 per day.

Noel

[Eugen]

Well I don’t know the rate at which they come in your area Eugen, but around here, easily kill 300 to 500 per day.

Noel

Not so many here. But then again, we had a family of skunks that dug grubs out of the garden and surrounding area every night! cute little buggers!

[propane1]

So starting to get potatoe bugs now. But only about a dozen or less so far. This is at my sons place. But I have two gardens there. About 500’ apart. One has bugs and the other doesn't.
The little patch of potatoes beside my step at home does not have any potatoe bugs yet.

Noel

[Eugen]

Get the torch out Noel. Hopefully the bugs will not go to the other gardens!

I planted a few potatoes very late, so maybe the bugs go away to someone else by the time my plants are out.

[DavidBarkey]

Not as many as usual around here so far . I thing weather and flipping the garden multi able times and let our birds chow down has helped .

[Toolslinger]

It's gotta be 15 years since we put in potatoes... Yet, I guarantee if I put them in again those bloody bugs would get them in no time. Where they were hanging out in the interim nobody would be able to tell me, but I flat out guarantee they would be present...

Not that it would matter, the deer would dig out the seed potatoes before they even got a chance...

[propane1]

It's gotta be 15 years since we put in potatoes... Yet, I guarantee if I put them in again those bloody bugs would get them in no time. Where they were hanging out in the interim nobody would be able to tell me, but I flat out guarantee they would be present...

Not that it would matter, the deer would dig out the seed potatoes before they even got a chance...

Yep your right toolslinger about the potato bug. They are in the ground like a June bug. They fly like a June bug. They have some sort of radar to find the plants. I took a bug off a plant last year and set it on the ground between the rows. Rows 4’ apart. It did less than two circles and headed right back to the plant it came from. But, it didn’t make it back. Hehe.


Noel

[propane1]

Get the torch out Noel. Hopefully the bugs will not go to the other gardens!

I planted a few potatoes very late, so maybe the bugs go away to someone else by the time my plants are out.

I tried that last year Eugen. Planting late. Sorry to say, but it doesn’t work.


Noel