Beet pests: description and control of them + photo

Cultivation of table beet includes not only its top dressing, watering and weeding, but also the fight against various insects that settle on the tops of this dicotyledonous herbaceous plant and begin to feed on it. Some adult arthropods or their larvae live in the ground. They gnaw through the root of a vegetable of the haze subfamily. As a result, the plant withers and dies.

Beetroot pests can destroy both young seedlings and an adult plant with an already formed root crop, so site owners should carefully inspect the beds with crops and destroy dangerous insects in a timely manner.

Beet pests and their control

There are several dozen different arthropods that can harm haze. These are worms, aphids, beetles, bugs, flies, moths, as well as their caterpillars and larvae. The danger of many pests lies in the fact that they multiply rapidly, and their colony eats leaves and root crops in the garden in a short time. Untimely noticed by the owners of the dacha or garden, insects can destroy the entire crop or most of it.

People are fighting arthropods using the entire arsenal of available methods. They use not only chemical insecticides, but also folk remedies. For large beetles, traps are made from improvised materials; small ones are washed off the sheets with a stream of water. Wood ash is used and weeds are removed in a timely manner, on which pests often start, later moving to neighboring useful plants.

Knowing the hallmarks of dangerous insects, the time of their appearance and effective ways to get rid of them, you can save the root crops in the garden and get a good and he althy harvest.

Beetles

Beetles such as the beet weevil and flea beetles are the main beet pests, and they are being combated in all parts of Russia.

Weevil is a gray-brown insect up to 13-14 mm long, its scaly body is pubescent with fine hairs. A distinctive feature, by which you can easily recognize the buracoed, is its front part of the head elongated into a tube. The beetles overwinter in the soil and come out in early spring. They are dangerous for plant seedlings, as they eat the cotyledons and bite the sprouts.

These insects love the quinoa, which also belongs to the subfamily of haze.In the areas where it grows, weevils have enough food, so they breed more. When several pairs of leaves appear on shoots (in the second half of May), each female lays 60-100 eggs in the ground, from which larvae hatch in a week. They feed on the roots of the plant, gnawing their passages. This spoils the appearance of root crops, causes wilting and yellowing of the tops. Adult weevils gnaw on petioles and edges of leaves, eat bracts.

A folk measure to combat beetles is to enclose a beet garden with small grooves with sheer walls. If a weevil gets into a ditch, it won't be able to get out. Trapped insects are collected and destroyed or sprayed on the spot with Decis. In summer, the quinoa should be pulled out of the ground in time until its seeds have fallen to the ground, then next year there will be less food in the area for beetles and their population will decrease.

Beet fleas are tiny insects up to 2.3 mm long, covered with dark green chitin. They fly from their wintering grounds to vegetable gardens in April and eat weeds first. When the haze sprouts, the flea feeds on cotyledons and leaves. Traces of its activity are through holes or pits gnawed in the pulp. The tops then turn yellow and curl. Often a bug, in addition to leaves, also eats a growing point, destroying seedlings at an early stage of life.

In May, fleas lay their eggs shallow underground, and after 2 weeks, larvae appear from them. They feed on borage roots for a whole month, but do not cause much damage to them, and then pupate. By August, young fleas come out of the pupae, which eat the tops of the plant, soon they fly away to wintering, where they eat weeds.

To save the plantings, you need to treat the beets from pests with wood ash mixed with tobacco dust (1:1 ratio).This should be done until the temperature outside exceeds +18 … +19 ° С, since in warm weather the fleas begin to multiply. Young shoots and leaves of haze are sprinkled with a wood-tobacco composition, and after 5 days the procedure is repeated.

Help fight small bugs with infusions of wormwood or marigolds, which are watered with beet sprouts. The pungent smell repels insects, and they jump to other places. If the owners prefer to destroy fleas with chemicals, then Kinfos and Imidor are suitable for this purpose.

Medvedka

A big pest of vegetable gardens is a bear, or earthen crayfish. Even 15-20 years ago, its description and image were found in literature and people examined the strange insect with curiosity. Now a live bear can be seen on your own or a neighbor's site. This orthopteran is able to move through the air, it also gets to the gardens along with manure, in which it likes to spend the winter.

Insect multiplies rapidly. One female can lay up to 500 eggs in the soil. Larvae emerge from them after 3 weeks, their formation into adults takes 2 years.

Earth cancer reaches a length of 5, less often 6-8 cm. Above its head is a shell that serves as protection for the insect. Of the three pairs of limbs, the first is the most unusual. Wide and powerful paws, similar to moles, are designed for digging the soil. Thanks to them, the bear digs long passages in the ground, along which it moves at high speed, looking for food. This arthropod also lives underground in burrows, crawling out at night.

Large insects feed on various root crops, eating them from all sides. In summer, they can also eat beet tops. Medvedki are most dangerous in the spring, when they gnaw through young shoots at the very roots. Often, earthen crayfish eat roots, without which the plantings wither and die.

To fight these arthropods, people use many methods. Since the bears live underground, they are lured to the surface by pouring several liters of a solution of laundry soap or washing powder into each mink, and then destroyed by chopping the body.

Traps with beer or honey water are widely used, as their smell attracts insects. A drink is poured into small bottles or jars, and the container is dug into the ground at an angle and the top is tied with a bandage. Medvedki gnaw through the fabric and make their way inside the bottles, but they cannot get out. More than a dozen individuals can fill one container.

In autumn, earthen crayfish are fought with manure. In several places of the site (along the perimeter), small pits are dug, which are filled with compost. Insects crawl there for the winter. When frosts come, traps are dug up and manure is scattered around the garden.Medvedki do not have time to get into the ground and die from the cold.

Nematode

In the soil of vegetable gardens there can be many cysts - brown shells of dead females, shaped like a lemon, in which there are eggs and larvae of roundworms. If a beet grows next to the cysts, the larvae gnaw through the shell and, using a thin spike near the mouth, penetrate the root. They dissolve plant cells with their enzymes to make them easier to absorb.

This affects the plant, which loses nutrients and develops more slowly: its leaves turn yellow and wither, many thin roots appear on the root crop (beardiness). Outwardly, a diseased vegetable looks smaller than a he althy one.

Adult males (transparent worms up to 1.3 mm long) leave the plant and no longer eat. They live in the soil for about a month, return to the females for fertilization, which, continuing to sit at the surface of the fruit and having grown, tear its shell with their backs.Females lay 300 eggs in an egg sac. Soon, adults of both sexes die, and the offspring remain in cysts. The shells can be moved by wind and water across the fields.

During the growing season, it is difficult to deal with nematodes, so a month before planting crops and after harvesting them, the soil is treated with nematicides. If the garden is affected by worms and their larvae, then in such conditions the cultivation of root crops will be ineffective. To disinfect the site, it will take 4 years to plant crops on it that are not affected by nematodes (wheat, clover, barley) .

Beet fly

Small, up to 8 mm, gray beet flies - sugar beet pests. In wet weather, they lay up to 100 white eggs under the lower part of the leaves. The larvae feed on the pulp of the tops, leaving the skin intact. The cavities inside swell and turn red. Soon the leaves wither and die.Surviving plants form fruit with low sugar content.

To fight the fly, spray insecticides in advance. If this is not done, the insects will multiply. It remains for the owners to inspect the green parts of the vegetable and destroy the discovered clutches of eggs and larvae, crushing them. It is necessary to remove and destroy leaf residues affected by flies, and in the fall to dig deep into the soil in the garden.

Beet bug

Beet bug is a pest of canteen and sugar beets. This brown or green bug reaches a length of 7 mm. It feeds on leaves and sprouts of vegetable crops. The yellow-green larvae that emerge from the 200 eggs laid by the female eat the flesh of the leaves. The fight against them is carried out with the help of Dinadim and Fufanon, greens are sprayed with solutions.

It is necessary to treat with preparations and autumn clutches of eggs that are resistant to cold and can overwinter in the soil, reborn in spring as adults.

Mining moth

Holes on the leaves of the beet plant are also left by the mining moth - an insect 6-7 mm long, reaching 14 mm in wingspan. This brown butterfly is dangerous because during the warm period of the year 4 generations of caterpillars appear from its eggs. May and June larvae feed on tops, which turn black and dry. Two other generations penetrate the root crop and gnaw out moves in it.

Fight against moths with the same means as with bedbugs. Cut leaves after harvesting are not left in the area where they grew.

Phomosis and cercosporosis of root crops

Gray is not only harmed by insects. Plants are affected by cercosporosis and phomosis - diseases that appear due to weak seeds, bad weather conditions, contaminated soil and improper planting care. With phomosis, a fungal disease, rounded yellow spots or dry heart-shaped rot form on the lower leaves.Beet cercosporosis appears on the tops of adult plants as brown spots with a red border up to 4 mm in diameter. Damaged leaves curl up, and fresh ones begin to grow in their place. The root crops of diseased crops are small, they are stored worse.

To protect the plants, you need to sow the beds only with treated seeds of disease-resistant varieties. Complex fertilizers should be applied to the soil under crops. To prevent diseases, it is necessary to water the tops with preparations containing copper. During the growing season, you need to thin out the plants, removing the weakest of them and damaged leaves. Root crops should be weeded in a timely manner, because fungal spores can get on beets from weeds.