Good Afternoon Garden-Lovers,
As I continue in my second summer of gardening with Albright College, I figured I’d start blogging again, so hello! I’m glad to be back and writing about my garden experiences to share with all of you to help make gardening a safer experience. The more we know and share with one another, the better gardens we can maintain together!
Moving forward, I thought I would dedicate this post to a specific new guy in town, the Colorado Potato Beetle. At first, I imagined this was a cucumber beetle as it resembles one in its’ size, shape, and pattern style. Last year, I fought off many cucumber beetles who had a small, oval-shaped structure with six legs that resembled a beetle (which it is). This year, I noticed a similar insect, who I mistook as a cucumber beetle. This is the Colorado Potato Beetle, who has a small, circular-shaped structure, with six legs. The cucumber beetles from last year were striped, from what I can recall, as are the Colorado Potato Beetles found this year.
The first sighting of the Colorado Potato Beetle was spotted on one of our eggplants in the garden. You’d think he would perch himself on a potato plant, but I guess eggplants would suffice since we do not have any potato plants. After spotting this, myself and the rest of the gardeners had to keep an eye out for any others and used insecticides when necessary. We use insecticides as a method to deter pests such as these that harm our vegetable plants, from the garden. It is unfortunate as these little guys are adorable, but they aren’t so adorable in our garden.
Below this post I have attached an image of the Colorado Potato Beetle (taken by my fellow peer, Sarah T.) and a link to a website that further discusses the Colorado Potato Beetle and how to handle the insect in your garden.
My goal in writing to you is to inform you of a new pest that has not been observed in our garden before (at least not in the past two summers). I also hope that this helps other gardeners identify and be rid of these types of pests as soon as possible. It’s no fun to grow some goodies only to have them taken away by these uninvited… pests!
Photo taken by: Sarah T., Albright Garden Intern.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Colorado Potato Beetle, please check out the following link: https://entomology.ca.uky.edu/ef312
Thank you for reading this post and I wish you the happiest of gardening!
Talk to you soon,
Supriya M.
Albright Community Garden 