Potato pests: description and treatment, fight against them plus photo

It is difficult to find a personal plot where potatoes are not grown, it is not for nothing that they call it the second bread. But such harmful insects as the potato armyworm 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 who like 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, safer control measures can be tried to get rid of insects on potatoes. Especially if the area is small.The number of time-tested methods is enormous. It is only necessary to notice in time that the leaves begin to dry out, and the bushes grow poorly.

Potato pests and their control with folk 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 site.
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. During the planting of tubers, a small amount of ash can be poured into each well. This will scare away insects that are in the ground and gnaw on potatoes, and also prevent the appearance of larvae in the soil. If a wireworm appeared on the site, then lime flour is added to the holes along with the ash.
Beer traps. To save potatoes from a bear, they usually make traps with beer. On the site you need to arrange bottles of beer, its smell attracts the bear. 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 all over the site.
Digging up the site. To prevent the appearance of potato pests in advance, in the fall after harvesting, you need to dig up the site. Most insects prefer to winter in the ground and lay their larvae there.

Who's eating potatoes?

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

Gnawing potatoes in the ground can also be the larvae of the Colorado potato beetle. 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 see the larvae inside the potatoes.

Another pest that gnaws on tubers is the wireworm. Eating tubers, he gnaws "passages" in them as if piercing with wire.

If it is relatively easy to deal with beetles that eat leaves on potatoes, then it is much more difficult to deal with underground pests.

What are the measures to control potato aphids?

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

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.

First, it is very difficult to understand that bugs appeared on potatoes. They form colonies on the underside of the leaf and at first there are no visible changes on the leaves. They begin to actively gnaw on the tops of potatoes when the colony increases. Then the aphids move to the outer side of the leaves, feeding on young and juicy shoots. The leaves begin to dry up gradually.

Fighting aphids on potatoes:

First of all, you should dig up the site in autumn and spring, as aphids prefer to winter in the ground. Weeds should also be destroyed regularly. After all, it is their appearance that contributes to the development of aphids on the leaves.
If ants appeared on the site, then urgent measures must be taken to combat them. After all, it is they who carry the aphids to the places where the anthill is located.
Such drugs as Rovikurt, Fosbecid and Aktellik have proven themselves well. At the first sign 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 of potato moth? Potato moth is a dangerous pest that can cause serious crop damage. Adults are a small brown butterfly. But the larvae of the moth pose the greatest danger to the tubers.

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

Fight against potato moth:

In order not to have to deal with it, when planting, you need to dig deep holes. 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 drugs from the Colorado potato beetle. But it should be remembered that in this case it is possible to harvest the crop not earlier than in a month.
Moth often appears in the basement where potatoes are stored. There is salvation from it. To do this, you need to take lepidocid and planriz (2 l: 0.5 l). Dip the potatoes in the solution for 20 minutes. Potatoes can be eaten after 3-4 days.
To prevent the moth from starting during the harvest, it is worth digging it up until the tops are dry. To do this, 1 week before harvesting, all the tops are mowed. Leaves should not be on the site, they are immediately collected and thrown away.

Fighting potato scoop

Potato scoop is a small butterfly that looks like a brown moth. A sexually mature individual does not cause much harm to potatoes, which cannot be said about caterpillars.

Gnaws scoop holes right in the tubers of potatoes, thereby causing great harm to the crop. The worm appears mainly on waterlogged soil, so if there were prolonged rains 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 and leaving no holes in it.

How to deal with potato armyworm larvae:

Nemabakt. If the bush has become painful, then Nemabact can be used. You need to breed it according to the instructions and process the area with potatoes. It is better to buy a product in specialized stores so as not to purchase a fake.
wormwood. The scoop does not tolerate the smell of wormwood. To prepare a 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 starts.
Prevention. The potato cutworm will not lay larvae if, after harvesting the potatoes, the area is dug up and all weeds are removed. You also need to regularly weed the beds.

How to get bed bugs out of potatoes?

How to deal with bedbugs in the Irkutsk region? Bed bugs can also ruin a potato crop if you don't start fighting them in time. Bed bugs 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 the bugs have begun to actively multiply and cause serious damage. You can use any preparations against pests of agricultural crops (Aktara, Gladiator, Zolon, Bassoon).
Onion peel. Bedbugs do not tolerate the smell of onion peel, so to deal with them you need to take 1 kg of peel 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 do not start taking action in time, then 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?

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

Fight the leafhopper as follows:

Tops after harvesting should not be on the site. An 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 in the area.
If the soil was heavily contaminated, then for several years in a row you need to grow onions or garlic in this place.
An effective pest control method is chemicals. The drugs Akarin, Calypso and Decis have proven themselves well. It is desirable to spray potatoes in warm, calm weather. The best time is early morning or evening. It is important to ensure that the drug falls on the lower part of the leaf, because it is from this side that the cicada eats the tops. If part of the solution remains after processing, then it must be poured out.
Garlic infusion will help get rid of the larvae that the cicada lays. 300 g of green garlic pour 3 liters of water and leave for a week in a dark room in a closed container.

How to remove a potato skewer from the plot?

From insects that infect potatoes, the most effective means of control is prevention. Potato skewer is also often found in plots. Shpanka eating 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 larva is found in the south, but due to the fact that winters are not so frosty and summers are hot, the Spanish larva may also appear in the central regions.

How to get rid of the skewer on potatoes:

You can collect the skewer manually if there are not very many beetles on the site. But you should be aware that the insect releases a substance that, when it gets on the skin, can cause abscesses and inflammation. Therefore, it is recommended to assemble the spatula with tight gloves.
The second way is to treat the bushes with pesticides. Any chemicals against insects can be used.

How to get rid of a potato ladybug?

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

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

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

Pests and their habitats

You need to regularly inspect the entire bush in order to notice pests on the site in time. But, depending on which part of the plant will dry out, you can make an assumption which insect has started on the site:

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

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