Not only hail in the middle of summer, prolonged rains or drought can become a disaster for gardeners. Very often, the Colorado potato beetle causes irreparable damage to the crop. Fighting it requires a lot of effort and can take up all your time, and the result is not always the same. There are many chemicals available against this pest, but they are unsafe for the environment and people. Fortunately, people have invented many methods for getting rid of the Colorado potato beetle on their haciendas, and what is especially valuable is that these methods are non-toxic and are sometimes more effective than chemical products. Mustard and vinegar are just one of these effective methods.
- 2 Principle of operation of the components
- 3 Cooking methods
- 4 We use the product correctly - the effect is guaranteed
- 5 In what cases is it better not to use vinegar and mustard?
- 6 Video: ways to combat the Colorado potato beetle
Colorado potato beetle - what is it?
This bug is a small, not very pleasant creature of black-yellow or black-brownish color, with brown legs. The shape of his body is oval, rather convex. A characteristic feature is the black stripes on the back, by which it is easily identified among other beetle-like insects.
The main target of the Colorado potato beetle is tender potato leaves.
Colorado beetles have a truly brutal appetite. In the spring, having left their winter underground shelters, they are able to walk a kilometer or more a day, looking for acceptable food. Their favorite delicacy is tender young potato leaves. But this striped creature is dangerous not only for potato crops. It can cause considerable damage to the harvest of eggplants, tomatoes, peppers, as well as other nightshade crops.
The larvae pose a greater danger to the crop than adult beetles, since they are able to destroy almost all planted potatoes in just two dozen days of their growth and development.
One of the characteristics of the Colorado striped beetle is its addiction to toxic chemicals. Every year insects develop more and more stable immunity against chemicals. This makes it even more relevant to use such folk methods as mixtures of mustard and vinegar, to which beetles do not develop immunity.
Operating principle of the components
It must be said that mustard itself does not kill striped garden pests. The effect of using mustard is that Colorado beetles simply cannot stand the smell of this plant and, accordingly, will bypass the tenth expensive bed with a mustard smell. In fact, mustard is nothing more than a repellent for the voracious natives of Colorado.
Repellents are plants that have a repellent effect and secrete certain substances that cause intolerance in certain insects.
Mustard has a repellent effect on both adult beetles and larvae. But it’s not just the mustard aroma that drives away the Colorado potato beetle: the leaves of potato shoots treated with a mustard solution completely lose all their taste appeal to pests.
Another advantage of mustard is that it is compatible with the vast majority of any other chemical or folk remedies used today in agriculture against the Colorado potato beetle.
Colorado potato beetle on potato leaves
There is another assistant in protecting potatoes from Colorado predators - vinegar. This substance has a sour taste and a sharp smell that hits the nose; If you are not careful, contact with vinegar can be dangerous. When dealing with this liquid, some precautions should be taken. Do not bring a container of vinegar close to your face and inhale sharply - this can burn the respiratory tract, nasopharynx, and mucous membranes of the eyes. Do not allow undiluted vinegar to come into contact with your skin - you may get burns. Getting vinegar on damaged skin (wounds, scratches, etc.) is especially dangerous.
Vinegar affects the Colorado potato beetle differently than mustard. A solution with a sufficiently strong concentration of vinegar is able to penetrate directly into the body, where it burns out all the insides of the insect. But to get this effect, vinegar must have a concentration of 80%, which will also have a detrimental effect on potatoes. Therefore, when planning to use vinegar to get rid of Colorado potato beetles, first dilute it so that the concentration does not exceed 9–10%. This will be enough for insects to forget the way to your garden, and such a solution is completely safe for plants.
Cooking methods
To get rid of the Colorado potato beetle using mustard and vinegar, there are several ways. You can prepare several types of solutions, where both ingredients are mixed in certain proportions or each is used separately; you can make a solution where, in addition to these two components, other substances are added; Or you can remove the pest simply with mustard. Let's look at ways to prepare different solutions.
Mustard powder
- Take two to three large spoons of mustard powder and add 1 liter of cold water. Let the resulting composition brew for a couple of days. Then the mixture is diluted with a bucket of water. The spray solution is ready.
- Instead of cold water, you can use boiling water or hot water, in which case the solution will be prepared faster. The proportions of mustard powder and water remain the same.
- You can also prepare a suspension. To do this, the amount of mustard powder is doubled; the volume of water remains unchanged.
- The effect of using the solution will be more pronounced and destructive for insects if 50 grams of laundry soap are added to the product.
- The mustard solution will be even more effective if you add 100 ml of acetic acid.
The prepared solution is used in any of two ways: potato bushes can be watered or sprayed.
As for the solution with the addition of vinegar, there are options here too.
When using vinegar, remember the concentration of the solution
- You can take a bucket of water and simply add 100 ml of acetic acid there. This is the easiest and fastest recipe.
- If you need to prepare a composition that is more lethal for beetles, do the following. For one bucket of water we take 100 ml of vinegar, one pack of mustard powder, 100 ml of turpentine, one or two glasses of wormwood tincture, 300 or 400 grams of onion peel infusion. Don't forget to add two fresh garlic heads. Mix all the ingredients, and the thermonuclear bomb for Colorado beetles is ready.
Whatever preparation option you choose, any solution must be filtered before use. All available solution recipes are completely harmless to crops and do not harm the environment.
In addition to those described above, simply sprinkling potato leaves with mustard powder also gives a good effect - for a striped potato leaf hunter, this will already be enough to inflame hostility towards your beds. This treatment lasts for about four days, then it needs to be repeated.
You will provide your potatoes with reliable protection from this harmful insect if you sow mustard between the potato bushes. Freshly growing mustard is just as intolerant to Colorado beetles as powder or solution. You can also additionally sow mustard seeds diagonally between the potatoes.
By the way, the proximity of potatoes and mustard in the same bed helps to repel not only the adult Colorado potato beetle, but also their larvae, and at the same time makes the potato crop unattractive to the wireworm.
Reviews from gardeners
Elena Sergeevna, Pavlodar
There is no way to live without potatoes on the plot. This is the most staple dish in our family. Therefore, we have to constantly fight the Colorado potato beetle. I bought all kinds of poison, the whole family collected voracious parasites - the effect was very weak. Now I spray it with mustard and vinegar. The cost of such processing is much less, and the result is better.
Alexander Maksimov, Krasnodar
I am a gardener with little experience. I started processing potatoes using folk remedies on the advice of my neighbors at the dacha. I dilute mustard powder, add vinegar and wormwood - the composition is ready for spraying. Sometimes I even change the proportions a little. But it still works. Once a week is enough. I come on the weekend, process it, and until my next visit the potatoes survive just fine. It is important here that my neighbors also regularly spray their beds, so the beetle does not move from one area to another.
We use the product correctly - the effect is guaranteed
There are several rules that should be followed when preparing and using protective solutions of vinegar and mustard against Colorado potato beetles. Compliance with these rules guarantees high efficiency from the use of the drug and the safety of your potatoes.
It is advisable to process potato plantings in the evening hours, when the heat of the day has subsided. This should also be done in warm, but not hot and windless weather.
For the treatment to be effective, you need a lot of solution. Don’t be afraid to go overboard with the quantity - the more abundantly the potato bushes are processed, the greater the chance that the harvest will remain intact. It is also necessary to monitor the regularity of treatment and avoid situations where the validity period of the last spraying/irrigation has already expired, but there is still no new one.
It is recommended to stop processing potatoes 20 days before the expected harvest.
If the solution is vinegar, then you should not water it; it is better to treat the leaves of the plants. In this case, you need to ensure that the solution remains on the plant itself, soaking the leaves and stems, and does not flow onto the ground. You can either water or spray the leaves with mustard solutions.
Potato harvest
Application of dry mustard powder
Dry mustard powder is an excellent option if you need to use it over a large area. The effect here is quite simple - the spice emits an unpleasant odor - it repels parasites not only from a specific bush, but from the entire garden plot. Colorado beetle larvae will also disappear from bushes treated with a natural repellent, since they will not like the powder.
There is no special recipe provided here. The only important condition is the freshness of the mustard. It is necessary to scatter a natural repellent in places where beetles accumulate most, as well as between the rows. In addition, the plants themselves also need to be treated.
After such treatment, the duration of action of the product will be for two to four days. This time is enough for the larvae to leave the vegetation; adult members of the family will leave the plant on the first day.
You can enhance the effect of mustard powder with the help of various substances; for example, professionals recommend combining it with a vinegar solution.
In what cases is it better not to use vinegar and mustard?
Despite the fact that mustard and mustard-vinegar solutions are very effective, there are certain conditions under which this product is not recommended to be used. So, in what cases will the use of mustard and vinegar not have the desired result?
- If the product is not fresh. It is useless to use a solution older than three hours. Therefore, such solutions are never stored and are prepared immediately before use.
- There is no point in processing potato shoots during the day in the sun. In direct sunlight, the solution will quickly lose its quality.
- When processing potato beds in rainy weather, in this case the entire solution will simply be washed away. Also, do not start spraying potatoes if weather signs clearly indicate that rain is on the way.
- It is also not recommended to use mustard-vinegar solution immediately after rain, after heavy dew or in foggy weather.
- Processing potatoes during strong winds will also not bring the desired effect.
- Using the product in the morning or afternoon is also not a good idea. It is best to process in the evening, towards sunset.
Video: ways to combat the Colorado potato beetle
Probably, someday an ideal remedy will be invented that will allow us to get rid of the Colorado potato beetle once and for all and at the same time be absolutely harmless to garden crops, humans and animals. But at the moment there is no such remedy among the drugs produced by the chemical industry. Therefore, instead of spending money on expensive, toxic and not always effective insecticidal products, try removing beetles from your area using any of the solutions that include vinegar or mustard. These recipes have been tested by thousands of summer residents, and they will certainly help you too!
- Author: Elena Shikhova
My name is Elena. Hobbies - music, literature, attending concerts, dancing, photography/Photoshop, learning to edit videos, regional studies, history of Europe and North America, history of Catholicism, cycling, writing various stories, sometimes short stories and poems, sometimes modeling from plasticine and polymer clay. Rate this article:
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general information
Mustard is considered a universal folk remedy, which is used not only in the culinary field, but also to control pests in the garden. With its help, you can quickly eliminate various insects, including the Colorado potato beetle, which causes high damage to all gardeners and summer residents.
Mustard is absolutely harmless to the environment, it does not harm plants or spoil fruits.
This product is usually produced in the form of a dry powder, which has a characteristic odor. The powder is packaged in medium-sized bags. Package weight may vary.
