Description of potato pests, treatment and control of them

It is difficult to find a personal plot where potatoes are not grown, it is not for nothing that they are called the second bread. But harmful insects such as the potato cutworm can cause serious damage to the crop. To prevent this from happening, you need to regularly inspect the bushes. Moreover, there are a lot of pests that love to eat potatoes. In order not to lose the harvest, you need to take all precautions.

How to deal with potato pests?

Before resorting to chemicals, you can try safer control measures to get rid of insects on potatoes. Especially if the area is small. The number of time-tested methods is huge. You just need to notice in time that the leaves begin to dry out and the bushes grow poorly.

Potato pests and their control using traditional methods:

• Potassium permanganate. The simplest and most common recipe for potato pests is a solution of potassium permanganate. For 1 liter of warm water you need to take 50 g of potassium permanganate and spray the bushes with the resulting solution. This method will quickly remove insects from the area.
• Wood ash. You can also spray the bushes with a solution of wood ash and warm water if insects have begun to eat the potatoes. When planting tubers, you can pour a small amount of ash into each hole. This will repel insects that are in the ground and nibble on potatoes, and will also prevent the appearance of larvae in the soil. If wireworms appear on the site, then lime flour is added to the holes along with the ash.
• Beer traps. To save potatoes from mole crickets, they usually make traps with beer. You need to place bottles of beer on the site; its smell attracts mole crickets. The insect will quickly disappear from the garden. And in order to get rid of the Colorado potato beetle in early spring, you can scatter chopped potatoes throughout the area.
• Digging up the area. To prevent the appearance of potato pests in advance, you need to dig up the area in the fall after harvesting. Most insects prefer to overwinter in the ground and lay larvae there.

Who's eating potatoes?

But not only insects can spoil the potato harvest. Often a mouse or shrew gnaws on a potato.It is very easy to understand that it is rodents that spoil the tubers. Teeth marks are clearly visible on the tubers.

The larvae of the Colorado potato beetle can also gnaw on potatoes in the ground. The pest gnaws small holes in the tubers. If there are a lot of larvae, then the potatoes can be heavily eaten. When harvesting, you can sometimes notice larvae inside the potatoes.

Another tuber-munching pest is the wireworm. When eating tubers, it gnaws out “passages” in them, as if piercing them with wire.

While it is relatively easy to combat potato beetles that eat tops, underground pests are much more difficult to deal with.

What are the measures to combat potato aphids?

Despite its name, potato aphids can appear not only on potatoes, but also on other crops. The control measures will be similar.

The potato aphid is a small insect with an elongated body. As a rule, it is green. There are two types of aphids:

• Winged.
• Wingless.

The winged potato aphid is slightly larger in size.

At first, it is very difficult to understand that bugs have appeared on potatoes. They form colonies on the underside of the leaf and at first there are no visible changes on the tops. They begin to actively gnaw potato tops when the colony grows. Then the aphids move to the outside of the leaves, feeding on young and succulent shoots. The tops begin to gradually dry out.

We fight aphids on potatoes:

• First of all, you should dig up the area in the fall and spring, since aphids prefer to overwinter in the ground. Weeds should also be destroyed regularly. After all, it is their appearance that promotes the development of aphids on the tops.
• If ants appear on the site, then it is necessary to urgently take measures to combat them. After all, they are the ones who transport aphids to the places where the anthill is located.
• Such drugs as Rovikurt, Fosbecid and Actellik have proven themselves well. At the first signs of the appearance of potato aphids, you can spray the bushes with these preparations.

How to get rid of potato moth?

What is the description and treatment for potato moth? Potato moth is a dangerous pest that can cause serious damage to crops. Adults are small brown butterflies. But the greatest danger to tubers is moth larvae.

The larvae that eat potatoes are characterized by a yellow-pink body, which reaches a length of 1 to 3 cm.

Fighting potato moth:

• To avoid having to fight it, you need to dig deep holes when planting. And during hilling, the height of the soil layer should be at least 15 cm.
• If the moth has already appeared, the bushes are sprayed with chemicals. You can use preparations against the Colorado potato beetle. But it should be remembered that in this case the harvest can be harvested no earlier than in a month.
• Moths often appear in the basement where potatoes are stored. There is salvation from it. To do this, you need to take lepidocide and planriz (2 l:0.5 l). Immerse the potatoes in the solution for 20 minutes. After 3-4 days, the potatoes can be eaten.
• To prevent moths from getting in during harvesting, you should dig it up before the tops dry out. To do this, 1 week before harvesting, all tops are mowed. There should be no tops on the site; they are immediately collected and thrown away.

Fighting potato cutworm

The potato bollworm is a small butterfly that looks like a brown moth. A sexually mature individual does not cause any particular harm to potatoes, which cannot be said about caterpillars.

The scoop gnaws holes right in the potato tubers, thereby causing great damage to the crop.The worm appears mainly on waterlogged soil, so if there has been prolonged rain for a long time, then the probability of the appearance of cutworm larvae is high. The larva crawls along the stem inside the tuber and begins to eat it from the inside, without touching the peel or leaving holes in it.

How to deal with potato cutworm larvae:

• Nemabact. If the bush has become painful, then you can use the drug Nemabact. You need to dilute it according to the instructions and treat the area with potatoes. It is better to buy the product in specialized stores so as not to purchase a fake.
• Sagebrush. The armyworm cannot tolerate the smell of wormwood. To prepare the decoction you need to take 3 liters of water and 1 kg of wormwood. Boil the broth for about 20 minutes. Then let it brew and strain. Potatoes should be watered before the flowering period and 2 weeks after it begins.
• Prevention. The potato cutworm will not lay larvae if, after harvesting the potatoes, you dig up the area and remove all the weeds. You also need to weed the beds regularly.

How to remove bedbugs from potatoes?

How to deal with bedbugs in the Irkutsk region? Bugs can also ruin the potato harvest if you do not start fighting them in time. The bugs that are found on potatoes are called cruciferous bugs. Most often found on cabbage.

Ways to get rid of bedbugs:

• Chemicals. It is better to use chemicals if bedbugs have begun to actively reproduce and cause serious damage. You can use any drugs against crop pests (Aktara, Gladiator, Zolon, Fagot).
• Onion peel. Bedbugs cannot stand the smell of onion peels, so to deal with them you need to take 1 kg of onion peels and 5 liters of water. Prepare a decoction and water the beds with it, paying special attention to areas where bedbugs appear in large quantities.You can also use a decoction of wormwood.
• Traps. If you don’t take action in time, the bugs will eat the entire crop. Therefore, among the beds you can lay out a cloth soaked in kerosene.

How to deal with leafhoppers?

Cicadas not only eat parts of plants, but also suck out the juice from them, thereby causing damage to the crop. The cicada looks like a fly, only gray-green in color.

They fight the cicada as follows:

• There should be no tops on the site after harvesting. The insect can lay eggs on it and in the spring the larvae will begin to actively hatch.
• You can hang several feeders near the site. Birds eat cicadas, thereby preventing them from breeding on the site.
• If the soil was heavily contaminated, then onions or garlic should be grown in this place for several years in a row.
• An effective method of pest control is chemicals. The drugs Akarin, Calypso and Decis have proven themselves well. Spray potatoes preferably in warm, windless weather. The best time is early morning or evening. It is important to ensure that the drug gets on the lower part of the leaf, because it is on this side that the leafhopper eats the tops. If some of the solution remains after processing, then it must be poured out.
• Garlic infusion will help get rid of the larvae that the leafhopper lays. Pour 300 g of garlic into 3 liters of water and leave for a week in a dark room in a closed container.

How to remove potato weed from a plot?

The most effective means of combating insects that attack potatoes is prevention. Potato blight is also common in areas. Spaniard that eats potato tops is very dangerous if you do not get rid of it in time. This is a small black bug.

As a rule, black spanish larva is found in the south, but due to the fact that winters are becoming less frosty and summers are hot, Spanish larva may appear in the central regions.

How to get rid of scallops on potatoes:

• You can collect shpanka manually if there are not very many beetles in the area. But you should know that the insect secretes a substance that, if it gets on the skin, can cause abscesses and inflammation. Therefore, it is recommended to assemble the spandex wearing thick gloves.
• The second way is to treat the bushes with pesticides. Any chemical against insects can be used.

How to get rid of potato ladybugs?

The potato ladybug is a small bug with orange wings and body. There are black spots on the wings. The potato ladybug feeds on the leaves without touching the veins. Over time, the leaf begins to dry out and die.

The potato ladybug is practically indestructible. The only way to get rid of it is to spray the bushes with chemicals. But after some time, most likely, the beetles will appear again.

You can use special biological preparations. Their main advantage is that they are harmless to humans. But there is one significant drawback - when it rains, they are quickly washed off from the plants. Therefore, you need to spray the tops on a sunny day.

Pests and their habitat

You need to regularly inspect the entire bush in order to notice pests in the area in time. But, depending on which part of the plant dries out, you can make an assumption about what kind of insect has appeared on the site:

• The potato fly prefers to breed mainly on leaves.
• Potato foliage is eaten by insects such as the Colorado potato beetle and its larvae, leafhoppers and potato flea beetles.
• The stems of the bush are often affected by Colorado potato beetles, potato moths, cutworms and mole crickets (underground parts of the stem).
• Potato tubers are chewed by mice, moles, wireworms, nematodes, mole crickets and potato cutworm larvae.

The easiest way to prevent the appearance of some insects is to dig up the area and remove weeds in a timely manner, as well as inspect the potato bushes. Then the harvest will be good.