Rain! and Bugs...

Two inches of rain and EVERYTHING is greener the very next day...

Hubby farmer found 4 potato beetles today! I so HATE these horrid little things. By this time last year they had munched through most of our plants. To date this year we have less then 10 adults (7 I think) and maybe a hundred or so little larval slugs.

The picture I stole from Tiny Farm blog. The picture is of them on eggplant, but they do the same damage to potatoes if uncontrolled. So HOW do you control them? We have a handful of methods. First step of the year is to just squash them, they pop an other worldly color of orange, and scout for eggs which you remove. When there are to many for that you whack them off the plants and into either a bucket of water or onto the ground (at which time we flame them.) In the mean time we can spray them with Surround, which a natural clay (actually used as a food additive.) It turns the plants white which confuses them and the bugs the bugs, they hate the feel of it. When all that fails we have bigger organic guns we can turn to, although I really hope we can avoid it...

But our 1/4 acre of spuds are looking great...