Whoever eats potatoes in the ground eats straight, and how to deal with it

Good afternoon, readers! Our team is friendly at work, so on the eve of the New Year holidays we decided to organize such an idea.

A kind of lottery. We write the names of all employees in the department on notes, mix notes, and each draws out a note with someone's name to whom he gives a symbolic present.

So, during this lottery, one of the colleagues joked that she would be glad to receive potatoes as a gift, because someone had bitten the whole crop. Who eats potatoes in the ground, gnaws straight - a good question for reflection. Read!

Who gnawed potatoes

Our readers sent a photograph of the damaged potatoes and ask the question: who gnaws the tubers? Gardeners have different assumptions - a scoop, a bear, a water rat, bugs ... We asked Irina IVANOVA, a specialist in plant protection, to comment on the photo. Here's what she said:

But this is just an assumption. You can verify if you find long underground passages with noticeable emissions of soil. An ideal option is an ambush at night with a shovel, a hidden flashlight and a readiness to instantly tear up the ground. Although not everyone likes this adventure diagnosis. ”

Get to know better

Water vole - a small animal with a shortened blunt muzzle and small ears - is a distant relative of hamsters. The body, covered with dark brown with a red tint of hair, reaches a length of 20 cm, a pubescent tail - at least 10 cm.

Water vole is a massive pest of crops and pastures. It harms in gardens, in vegetable gardens, in places of storage of vegetables. Usually settles on the banks of rivers, lakes, ponds, in the vicinity of the swamp, but often it can be found far from the water - in meadows, gardens, fields.

Rodents are very voracious, they can get food from a depth of 40-60 cm. They do not hibernate for the winter, therefore they are forced to make very large food supplies.

Why are there more

All mouse-like rodents are characterized by sudden outbreaks of numbers, which is associated with their ability to reproduce. Some scientists believe that the growth in numbers coincides with the cycles of solar activity (according to different opinions, 11-year-olds or 7-year-olds). It is also believed that the reason is improper farming.

Favorable conditions for the life and reproduction of rodents are created by fine tillage with blemishes, careless harvesting, the presence of row spacing and wide roadsides covered with weeds. In such cases, rodents have more food in a small habitat, less likely to die from predators.

Death from natural causes

The number of mouse-like rodents can naturally decrease with their mass death in winter during a period of sharp thaws with snow melting. Water entering the holes expels the animals outside, while it freezes, clogging the exits.

Domestic cats also help free the garden from rodents. Reduce the number of mouse-like rodents and diseases in which they die in thousands.

Control measures

Warning: elimination of wide inter, roadsides overgrown with weeds; thorough digging of the earth; timely harvesting; constant collection of fruit trees; in orchards, winter trimming of trunks and skeletal branches of young trees with spruce branches (needles down), roofing material, nylon fabric, fine-mesh metal mesh; periodic compaction (thawing) of snow around the trunks in winter; protection of healthy birds of prey and animals.

Fighter: laying in holes or other shelters of permitted drugs, for example, GryzNet-agro, 2 capsules per hole (safety measures should be observed, work with gloves, use special spoons or scoops, and also exclude access to holes of other animals ); the use of traps, which are usually installed at the entrance to the burrows of rodents.

The main pests of vegetables and potatoes

Cruciferous fleas - small (0.2-0.3 cm) jumping bugs of dark green color or black with yellow stripes. They harm young shoots of cabbage, radish, radish, beet and other crops by gnawing the flesh of a leaf.

Fleas are especially dangerous in dry, hot weather, when they harm even cabbage seedlings. Leaf-damaged leaves have many holes and will dry out soon.

To control fleas, you can pollinate crops with pyrethrum (10-25 g per 10 sq. M), sprinkle plants and soil with ash or tobacco dust, mixed with an equal amount of lime. For 10 square meters. m sowing requires 100-150 g of the mixture.

Pollination is best done early in the morning, through dew, repeating it 2-3 times at intervals of 7-10 days - until the flea disappears. You can also use glue flags - a piece of material attached to a stick, impregnated with some kind of sticky substance. Such a flag is driven over plants, and fleas, jumping, stick to it.

It is necessary to remove weeds from the garden, as they are the original shelter of the flea, deeply till the soil in autumn, and sow in the early stages.

In the last decade of May, the butterfly begins to lay eggs, placing them one at a time on the lower and upper sides of cabbage, radish and other cruciferous leaves. The eggs are yellow.

One female lays 150 or more eggs. In 7-11 days, caterpillars are born from them. Their body is velvet-green in color with thin yellow stripes on the sides, the size is 2-2.5 cm. The caterpillars eat out the sheet tissue, first making a window, and then through holes.

Caterpillars of older ages gnaw leaves completely, leaving veins untouched. In the summer, they are often wedged between the leaves that cover the cabbage, causing it to rot. The greatest harm is caused by turnip whitewash, other cruciferous ones are damaged to a lesser extent.

The easiest way to deal with turnip whites in small areas is to systematically inspect plant leaves and crush eggs, and later collect and destroy caterpillars.Collect them in a bucket, pouring a little saline into it.

If there is a need to use poisons, it is recommended that when caterpillars appear, spray plants with biologics or a solution of karbofos (20-30 g per 10 liters of water). To treat cabbage with poisons is possible only until the head of cabbage.

You can spray the plants with a decoction of tomato tops. The broth is prepared as follows: 3.5 kg of tops (leaves, stepsons, stems and even green fruits) are finely chopped, poured with ten liters of boiling water and left for 10 days.

Infusion of stalks and leaves of delphinium is also used. For this, one part of the green mass is poured with 10 parts of cold water, insisted for two days, filtered, 40 g of soap are added and used to spray plants.

You can also spray the plants with a solution of sodium chloride (400 g per 10 liters of water), sprinkle with tobacco dust with ash or fluffy lime.

In autumn, after harvesting cabbage, it is necessary to dig a plot to the entire depth of the arable layer, and also to remove all residues from the garden - fallen leaves, kocherigi, etc. In this way, a large number of pupated caterpillars wintering in the ground, on fallen leaves, in kocherigi are destroyed .

Cabbage scoop - night butterfly brownish-gray. The wingspan is 4–4.5 cm, the front wings have dark transverse stripes and two spots at the front edge.

Along the outer edge of the front wings is a light wavy line. Eggs are grayish-gray, hemispherical in shape, with longitudinal ribs. Caterpillar at a young age is green, adult - thick, brownish-green, up to 5 cm long. Pupa dark brown, smooth, shiny.

Cabbage scoop is distributed throughout the Far East and belongs to the most dangerous pests of cabbage, it also damages beets, lettuce, peas, onions and other plants. Butterflies fly out of overwintered pupae at the beginning of summer, laying their testicles on the underside of leaves, in heaps of 30-50 pieces.

One female lays an average of 600-700 eggs, and in total she can lay up to 2000. Freshly laid eggs are almost white, then darken. After 5-12 days, caterpillars emerge from the eggs. At first they live in groups on the underside of the leaves, and then they creep out and during this period eat at night, and during the day they usually hide among leaves or under clods of earth.

In the fall, the caterpillars bite into the head of the head, making moves, and pollute it with their stool, which causes the heads to rot. For pupation, the caterpillars go to the ground. In July, the first generation of caterpillars (early cabbage) harms, in late August - September - the second generation (late cabbage). Second generation pupae overwinter.

Gnawing scoops - caterpillars of night butterflies. During the day they are in the ground, and at dusk and at night they creep out to the surface and bite stems and leaf stalks in young plants, and in adults they damage the leaves and make holes in them.

Biting scoops in the Far East greatly harm most vegetables, especially cabbage, tomatoes and beets in June - July. They severely damage young shoots of potatoes, gnawing them. stems.

The fight against scoops is difficult, as they lead a hidden (underground) lifestyle. Caterpillars can be dug up and destroyed in the morning, gently tearing the ground around the damaged plant. It is also necessary to dig up the garden in the fall, while a significant part of the wintering caterpillars die.

Cabbage Moth damages cabbage leaves, eating small windows in them from the lower side and leaving the upper skin intact. With the mass appearance of caterpillars, cabbage leaves turn white. The butterfly is small, flies in the evening; the caterpillars are small (0.9-1.2 cm), bright green, with a black head, small black dots and rare black hairs throughout the body.

In young plants, caterpillars eat a growth point and leaves. In damaged plants, heads of cabbage are not tied or remain loose, underdeveloped. Caterpillars overwinter in post-harvest residues, weeds. Over the summer, up to three generations of cabbage moth develop.

The control measures are the same as against cabbage caterpillars. You must start the fight against cabbage moth immediately after the appearance of the first signs of damage and end by the beginning of the formation of the head of cabbage. When processing, you need to ensure that the poison falls on the whole plant. Biological products are effective against cabbage moth.

The larvae of the cabbage fly also damage radishes by making holes in root crops. Cabbage fly in the northern regions of the region causes especially great harm.

To scare away the flies, they sprinkle the earth around the plants with naphthalene mixed with sand (1 part naphthalene for 5-8 parts sand) or a mixture of equal parts of tobacco dust and lime. You can sprinkle with lime fluff with creolin (20: 1) or feverfew.

The simplest methods of destroying the eggs of a cabbage fly are raking the earth, together with the testicles from the plant in the middle of the aisle and adding fresh earth from the row to the bush. This operation must be repeated 2–2 times every 5–6 days.

Early planting of seedlings and high hilling reduce damage by cabbage fly larvae. A preventative control measure is the removal and destruction of stokers.

Variegated, or northern, cabbage bug. Insects with a short elongated body (8-11 mm), greenish-bronze color, with six greenish-black spots, a red stripe along the edge and the same two transverse spots. Larvae are smaller, wingless, brightly colored.

In mid-May, adult bugs leave wintering places (from under fallen leaves, moss on the edges of bushes). At first, they feed on wild-growing cruciferous plants, and after planting seedlings of cabbage, its leaves are damaged by sucking juices. As a result, discolored spots form on the leaves.

In massive quantities, bugs and their larvae appear in July - August. During this period, they damage the testes of radishes, cabbage and other cruciferous crops, sucking juices from leaves and stems. Damaged plants exhibit weakened flowering, poor development of pods, and seed frailty.

Control measures. If a pest is detected, spraying with a solution of kalbofos (10-30 g per 10 l of water) is carried out. Processing plants with pesticides must be stopped 30 days before harvesting.

Nailtails gnaw cotyledons and leaves of cucumbers with round pits, as well. elongated holes are punched on irregularly shaped leaves of onion. Cotyledons of cucumbers are often completely destroyed, and onions on the tips of the leaves turn yellow, curl and dry.

Nailtails are especially active on sunny, calm days, and in cloudy weather, with strong winds, they hide under clumps of earth.

To control pests, seedlings and the earth around them should be dusted with ash. We must strive to create the most favorable conditions for the development of plants during this critical period, since usually with the appearance of true leaves, the harmfulness of these insects is no longer dangerous.

Aphid - small insects (midges) of a greenish or dark brown color. Different types of aphids damage a number of vegetable plants, sucking juices out of them. The greatest harm to aphids is caused by cabbage and cucumbers, it also harms melon, watermelon, pumpkin and peas. Damaged leaves curl and gradually dry out, the plants lag behind in growth and take an ugly-dwarf form.

To destroy the pest, you need to spray the plants with a soap solution (200-300 g of soap per 10 liters of water) or a tobacco decoction with soap (500 g of tobacco dust and 100 g of soap per 10 liters of water), as well as a solution of karbofos (10-30 g per 10 l of water). You can treat the plants with the infusion of garlic.

For this, 150-200 g of garlic is ground in a meat grinder and stirred in 10 liters of water. The solution is used immediately. You can also use a decoction of ash. Sifted ash in an amount of 300 g is boiled in a small amount of water for 20 minutes, then filtered, the total volume of water is brought up to 10 l and 30 g of laundry soap is added.

The fight against aphids should begin at the first signs of the appearance of a pest. Process the underside of the leaves. It is necessary to remove weeds, stokers and other plant residues from the garden after harvesting.

Onion fly resembles in appearance a housefly. Lays testicles (in heaps of 5 to 20 pieces) between the leaves of the beetle, on dry scales or on the ground near the neck of the bulb. After 7-10 days, an ulcer of the testicles, whitish larvae emerge that penetrate the bulb and destroy it.

To combat this pest, which is dangerous for onions, it is recommended to sow seeds and plant seedlings or seeds in the earliest possible time. During the flight of the flies, repellents are used. Along the rows of onions and garlic, sprinkle with tobacco dust, pyrethrum, ash, peat or mothballs, mixing it with the same amounts of sand.

You can also sprinkle sawdust soaked in creolin in rows, or scoop up testicles from plants. It is necessary to remove plants affected by larvae from the garden and destroy them, as well as carefully remove all post-harvest residues.

Watering plants with table salt solution is also used (a glass of salt in 10 liters of water). In this case, you must ensure that the solution does not fall on the leaves. The first time watered when the leaves reach 5 cm, then every 20 days.

It is useful to place onion and flower beds near. carrots. The specific smell of carrots repels onion flies, and onion volatile - carrot flies.

Tubercle often harms crops of onions and garlic along with onion flies. Larvae are yellowish-gray, have a characteristic reddish-brown outgrowth at the posterior end. The larvae penetrate the bulb and eat it.

Bulbs rot and become unusable. Deals no less serious damage than an onion fly. The control measures are the same as with the onion fly.

Wireworms - yellowish larvae of nutcracker beetles living in the ground, with a solid, elongated body resembling a piece of wire. They bite stems of many crops and make moves in potato tubers, as well as in root crops of carrots, beets, foreheads and other crops (especially in young ones).

Live in the soil from 3 to 4 years.In mid-summer, larvae pupate, and in 15–20 days young beetles appear, which remain for wintering in the soil.

These crops are sown early in the spring before planting (sowing) or between rows during the growing season of vegetables and potatoes. Young plants of bait cultures are dug up with lumps of earth and larvae are selected. Wireworm breeds well in acidic soils, so they should be limy.

Potato 28-spotted ladybug (epilahna) - a round-oval convex dish, 5-7 mm long, brownish-red in color; on both elytra there are 28 black spots. At the end of June, females lay pale yellow elongated eggs in bunches on the lower surface of the leaves.

The larva is yellow-green, planted with black branched shoots-setae. In recent years, a significant spread of this pest in gardens.

Damage is caused by both the beetle and the larva, which affect potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, melons, watermelons and other crops. The greatest harm is caused to potatoes. The larvae eat out the flesh of the leaves, leaving the veins intact - they skeletonize the leaves. From the second decade of August a new generation of these pests appears. Cow larvae are almost always on the underside of leaves.

You should also carry out manual collection of beetles and larvae, shaking them in scoops and catching with netting. To destroy the caught insects, they are poured into buckets or banks, at the bottom of which there is a layer of water and kerosene.

Medvedka East - A large brown-brown winged insect. The front legs end with large teeth, with which the bear digs the soil, and gnaws the plants with horny jaws.

The bear is very prolific, it lays in May from 200 to 400 eggs, from which larvae hatch after one to two weeks. Thanks to well-developed wings, it is able to fly a considerable distance.

Bears prefer wet areas. Especially a lot of them accumulate on humus-rich lands. Pests lead a hidden lifestyle, in the daytime they are in the soil, and at night they come to the surface.

Adult bears winter and their larvae in soil or manure. Bears damage all vegetable crops, and not only in open ground, but also in greenhouses. In spring, they leave wintering places, make moves in the soil, eat sown seeds, gnaw the roots and the underground part of the stems, causing the death of plants.

The easiest and most affordable way to deal with the bear - the device of hunting pits. In the places where pests accumulate, in the autumn they dig a pit of arbitrary length, a width of 50 cm and a depth of 30 cm. Heated manure is laid in the pit.

Bears willingly climb there for the winter. With the onset of frost, manure is thrown out of the pit, and insects die from low temperatures. In order to destroy the nests and passages of the bear, in the fall, the site is dug up to the full depth of the arable layer.

If in the fall hunting pits were not suitable, then in the spring they lay out small bait heaps of manure (preferably fresh). Bears willingly crawl there to lay eggs. After 25-30 days, heaps are scanned, the bear and eggs are burned.

The following are recommended as deterrents: a) dry sand (one bucket) moisten 0.5 l of kerosene and sprinkle it in the places where the bear is concentrated; b) moisten the sawdust (one bucket) with creolin and sprinkle in places of accumulation of the pest; c) several times sprinkle the ground near the plants with mothballs.

You can catch the pest with the help of beams, on the bottom of which vegetable oil is poured, with a layer of 1 cm. Banks are dug into the ground slightly below the surface and somewhat deeper or at the level of the bear’s course. Top they are covered with a cardboard or wooden lid. Attracted by the smell of oil, the bears fall into jars and die.

In the fight against the bear, such a popular, easily accessible method is also used. They acquire small fish (sprat, sprat, etc.) - pickled, spicy salted or fresh and even spoiled. They tear it into halves and lay it in the holes during transplanting to a depth of 3-4 cm in the form of a triangle.

On the ridges, carcasses of fish are laid out between the landing rows to the same depth. It was established that the bear does not enter either the ridges or the holes where the fish is laid, the seeds and plants remain intact.

It is noted that the bear does not live in soil fertilized with chicken droppings, does not like the smell of garlic, it is frightened by marigold flowers.

As a preventive measure to prevent the appearance and accumulation of the bear, drainage reclamation is of great importance - the device of drainage ditches for the outflow of excess moisture, maintaining high ridges and ridges during the summer.

Garden without pests

Medvedka is a small brown insect, its body length reaches 5 cm. It has shortened elytra, well-developed limbs.

Medvedka

Distributed in many CIS countries, but most of all in the central and southern regions of Russia and Ukraine, as well as in the damp and warm regions of Moldova and Belarus. If there are no abundantly cultivated areas, the bear moves to greenhouses, closer to vegetable crops. She eats everything: cabbage, beets, carrots, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes and eggplant.

In one nest, up to 400-440 eggs are placed, of which, after one or two decades, bright voracious larvae appear, which pose a very great danger to the garden.

Control measures You should not buy manure from random suppliers to fertilize the site. If the bears did appear, you must first try to destroy them without pesticides.

There is a simple and environmentally friendly way: you need to make traps from half-grown manure into which the bears willingly climb. There they are easy to assemble and destroy.

Toxic drugs such as zinc phosphide mixed with boiled corn or barley should not be abused. Such poisons accumulate in the soil and then pass into root crops, tubers and other organs of plants that we feed on.

Leaf beetles

Lamellar beetles are divided into several harmful species, among which the most dangerous are lamellar bronzes, May beetles, and June chives. Bronze flowers eat inflorescences and flowers of cabbage and other cruciferous, as well as buds of flowering onions.

Chafer beetle and June chafer damage root crops and roots. The chafer beetle has reddish-brown elytra with a black border at the edges. The length of the body along with the chitin cover is from 22 to 30 mm. Beetles overwinter in the soil. They fly out in early May, in warm springs in late April.

It is difficult to interrupt the development cycle of this beetle, because the females lay their eggs in the soil to a depth of at least 10 cm. After a month, white thick larvae appear from yellowish-white eggs. Their yellow heads stand out sharply against the background of an arched body. It takes 3 to 5 years to complete the full development cycle.

Control measures. For mass propagation of the May beetle, Inta-Vir plants should be sprayed (1 tablet per 10 liters of water). In the morning, when the beetles are inactive, they are shaken off onto a film or burlap.

For 1 acre, they dig 8 holes 50 x 50 x 30 cm in size and calculate the concentration of larvae. If the average is more than 1 larva per 1 m2 of plot, it is necessary to dig the soil deep in the autumn and spring and manually collect all the larvae.

Snails

The harmfulness of snails does not appear externally. But with their tiny chitinous teeth, they gnaw through through the entire sheet integumentary parenchymal tissue.

Snails feed on fruits and even mushrooms. Eggs are laid in the soil. Snails overwinter, burying themselves in the ground, from where they emerge in the spring. On hot summer days, they completely cover the hole in the hole with mucus and can be in a state of hibernation for a long time.

Places of distribution of snails are waterlogged berry and garden plantings. Not all types of snails are equally harmful. Amber, hairy and forest snails are more harmless than grape, which eats not only grapes, but also cabbage, beets and other succulent garden plants.

Control measures. With mass distribution of snails collected manually. This must be done early in the morning or in the evening before dusk, as snails avoid direct sunlight. On hot days, collecting snails is difficult.

Colorado beetle

This multi-pest pest was once brought to Russia from America, or rather, from the potato fields of Colorado. Hence the name of the beetle.

The back and elytra are yellowish-red or bright yellow, on the underwings there are 5 black longitudinal stripes, and black spots stand out in relief on the front part. For winter, beetles climb deep into the soil: 20–50 cm is the usual depth to which pests descend.

As soon as the temperature of the soil rises to 25 ° C, the beetles get out of their shelters and begin to eat any plants of the nightshade family, even wild nightshade, poisonous dope and bleached. Beetle is very dangerous for potatoes, which have juicy tender sprouts. Beetles are quite mobile: they are able to fly long distances in search of food.

This beetle penetrates into greenhouses with tomatoes, it is attracted by their strong specific smell. Eating the leaves, the beetles gain strength, and the females begin to lay their eggs on intact leaf blades from the underside. The eggs are yellow at first and then blush. Their length is 1-2 mm, the shape is elongated-oval, the surface is smooth and shiny, in each clutch there are several tens of eggs.

For 2 decades, the larvae completely destroy the potato foliage, only bare stems remain above the ground. Having eaten one plant, the larvae crawl to the next.By this time they grow, reaching a length of 1, 5 mm, their color is orange-red, the body is divided into segments covered with black spots, on each segment, as a rule, 3 spots.

The pupa also acquires such a color, but it is slightly smaller than the larva. The pupa develops after satiated larvae slide from an almost destroyed plant and pupate in the ground. 1-2 weeks pass, and a new generation of young bugs is born.

Control measures. Control measures should be both preventive and protective, aimed at defeating the beetle. A beetle appears where potatoes grow. Most summer residents grow early potatoes. It is impossible for the most dangerous pest to gain strength on potato tops. Potatoes should not be planted in the same place where they were planted the previous time.

When harvesting potatoes, do not leave tubers in the ground. After harvesting, it is necessary to dig or plow the soil, so that the beetles hiding for the winter are on the soil surface, then frost will destroy them.

Soil cultivation should be carried out in the summer when pupation occurs between rows. Such digging at shallow depth will partially help destroy the pupae in the ground.

Do not often use chemical methods of control: pesticides act not only on beetles. If there are few pests, you can initially limit yourself to manual collection in small containers with a strong aqueous solution of ordinary salt. Potato tubers are partially protected from the direct effects of chemicals by a layer of earth, unlike tomatoes, physalis, peppers and other nightshade crops, which use aboveground organs for food.

The latter should be treated with the least toxic substances, for example bitoxibacillin, which is dissolved in water at 40-100 g per bucket of water. This is a biological product that destroys larvae after 3-fold treatment with a weekly interval.

3 weeks before harvesting, you can spray plants with Inta-Vir. A bucket of water will require 1 tablet of insecticide. Potato plantations are treated with many insecticides: sonnet or biorin - 10 g per 10 l of water, bifetrin - 35 g per 10 l of water, phenaxin - 100 g per 10 l of water, fury - 0.7 ml per 10 l of water, sumi alpha - 5 g per 10 l of water, rovikurt - 10 g per 10 l, decis - 2 ml per 10 l of water.

Marsh scoop

Sometimes it is called potato, but this is not entirely true, since it also eats tomato, corn and other plants. Caterpillars near the ground gnaw passages in the stems of crops and eat out the contents, making moves in the core, after which the plants dry up and die, and even wet weather does not save the damaged stem from dying and progressive rot.

In the Non-Black Earth and central Russia, the introduction of caterpillars usually begins in June, immediately after planting the tomatoes in open ground. Caterpillars pupate in the soil next to plants in late July.

Butterflies can lay eggs on wild grasses. Scoops stand out against a green plant background with red or dark pink wings with a span of up to 3, 5–3, 8 mm.On the edge of the front wings you can find a clear border of gray color, which extends to the entire surface of the hind wings of this scoop.

From eggs laid on cultivated and wild grasses, large, long (up to 4 cm) caterpillars with black warts and setae appear, the head has the color of fresh blood, the body is streaked with stripes of the same color.

Control measures. Hilling of tomatoes after planting prevents the penetration of caterpillars into the stems. The positive effect is the introduction of mineral fertilizers in the summer.

Damaged plants are removed along with the root system and burned. If the marsh scoop has multiplied greatly, spraying with chemical preparations is carried out. The dosage and set is the same as for the fight against the Colorado potato beetle.

Solanacea or potato flea

Outside the protected ground, in the open air, a flea can thoroughly damage the planting of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and potatoes. It damages foliage, on which numerous holes appear, as the flea eats away the soft tissues of leaf blades, leading to withering and inevitable death of the plant.

Like most dangerous pests of the nightshade family, the flea spends winter in the soil, escaping in the upper layer from sharp fluctuations in low temperatures. In early May, beetles usually wake up and come to the surface. Unlike many scoops, beetles do not need green plants to lay eggs.

Usually egg laying occurs under a well-heated lump of earth. Eggs yellow, elongated oval, 0.6 mm long. They are easy to spot with the naked eye on the ground. Potato flea larvae populate the root system of nightshade plants. The shape of the larvae is elongated, the adult larva has 3 pairs of limbs. Active pupation requires a well-warmed soil.

Control measures. Excessive soil moisture is detrimental to a bloshka, so planting should be watered more often. Pollination of plantings with a mixture of tobacco dust, lime and ash is recommended for individual sites. 3 weeks before harvesting, dusting should be stopped.

Wireworms

This is one of the most dangerous types of pests. Dark, striped, sowing, black, shiny, wide and steppe wireworms, united by the common name - nutcrackers, are especially harmful. Beetles damage roots, root crops, tubers and root necks. Larvae damage cabbage, their bodies are worm-shaped, the chitin cover is dense.

The development of nutcrackers proceeds extremely slowly; as a rule, it takes 3-4 years until the pupation begins. This process occurs in soil at a depth of 14–16 cm, usually closer to mid-summer, when the temperature regime for them can be considered ideal.

Pupae turn into bugs after half a month. Young beetles crawl in the soil in a vertical direction. Excess moisture and cold make them bury deeper, and with the onset of warming, they again rise up.

The wireworms themselves are small, their bodies are slightly longer than 1 cm, the color is brown, bluish, or black. The nutcrackers got their name because of the clicks that are heard when the beetle, having fallen on its back, jumps up sharply, making a sharp clicking sound.

Control measures. Beetles are afraid of lime, alkaline fertilizers. Liming, spring application of ammonium sulfate, ammonium nitrate into the soil is very effective. Deep plowing and frequent loosening are applicable.If the generation of wireworms is too numerous, then it is necessary to plant inedible cultures for beetles.

You can treat the seeds with a suspension of 65% c. n. Fantiurama or Fantiuram-molybdate, 4 g per 1 kg of seeds, which will scare the nutcrackers not only from seeds in the soil, but also from shoots of many vegetable plants on the site.

Who gnaws potatoes on a site?

Mole rat mainly lives on the lands of Ukraine, the Western Ciscaucasia and in some southern regions of Russia. However, more and more often the rodent is noticed much to the north, for example, in the Southern Urals. He is actively exploring new lands and spoiling the crop. The main delicacy of mole rats is tubers of potatoes, carrots and beets.

This animal is really blind. Instead of eyes, he has a fold of skin covered with stiff bristles. The front legs are similar to rats, four fingers are strongly developed, with which he digs minks and tunnels. Unlike moles, mole rats feed only on root crops and do not eat insects.

The mole rats are not so dangerous for the gardener in the sense that they are not prolific. Two to three babies a year appear. It is difficult to drive them out of the garden. Gardeners who encounter a beast note their endurance even to ultrasound. They do not respond to light vibrations, such as moles. Why? Perhaps this is due to the fact that mole rat goes deep into the ground. Its tunnel system is a multi-tiered structure.

Close to the surface are passages that are used to search for root crops. They have sharp branches down - this is the "first floor" of the mole rat. There he goes along with small potatoes. A deeper tier goes towards the rodent's pantries and his "bedroom".

In winter, the animal burrows into the ground to a depth of three meters. Gardeners try to catch mole rats using various traps or traps. To do this, a trap is installed at the exit from the mink.

If this animal is seen in the garden, measures must be taken urgently, otherwise the whole harvest for the next year "will go underground."

Water Garden Scourge - Earthen Rat

The earthen rat in appearance is very similar to the usual, familiar rat or large mouse. However, this rodent has nothing to do with rats per se. She has a different lifestyle. It is found near water bodies and this, perhaps, is the main condition for its appearance.

Very often, it poisons the life of gardeners whose plot is located near lakes. There, for the rodent, the optimal conditions for existence are formed - there are potatoes, and some water, where you can swim. Earthen rats are excellent swimmers.

All the horror of the appearance of earthen rats lies in their rapid reproduction. In one year, the population in the garden can grow significantly. If you don’t take any measures, you can forget about the harvest, it will go to feed whole flocks of rats. Seeing rodents is pretty simple.

Adults reach 25 cm in length with their tail. Weight reaches 500 g. Near the houses and in the gardens, the rat appears closer to the fall, when the crop is "ready". In the summer, they live near water bodies.It is easier to deal with them than with mole rats. Rats really do not like pungent smells and a certain frequency of sounds.

There are special electromagnetic repellers. They deftly expel rodents for two to three days. The disadvantage of this method is that a lot of repellers will be needed.

There is a cheaper, but more effective way to fight - kerosene, gasoline, engine oil and plants. A piece of cloth should be moistened with any of the petroleum products and placed in a hole. In order to at least somehow preserve root crops, plant peppermint, elderberry, wormwood or tansy in the areas where these vegetables grow.

These plants are afraid of rats like fire. Poisoning rodents is not recommended! Cats can eat carcasses of poisoned animals, and poison can enter the soil.

Potato moth

"Thank" for the harmful "treasure" the world should Central and South America, where the mole comes from. It was from these places that her journey around the world began and now the pest can be found in several dozen countries. In Russia, the “debut” took place in the 80s of the 20th century, that is, not so long ago. She came to the fatherland with loads of tobacco and tomatoes, her favorite treat. Today the south of our country is a home for potato moths.

Scientifically, potato moths are called fluoridea. This brown-gray insect with dark edges and spots on the wings does not grow with a wingspan of more than 13 mm. With folded wings, it is generally only 6-8 mm. The butterfly has an unnaturally small mouth organ, but rather long antennae.

The biological cycle of fluoridea

The hotter the air temperature, the faster the development of the insect from the egg to adulthood. The average transformation period is 3-4 weeks, but look at the variation in temperature difference: if the mole develops in + 35С for 16 days, then + 15С is already 70, and in + 10С the period is already 200 days!

The whole process of life of a potato moth looks like this:

1. Egg. At this stage, the pest is up to 7 days in the summer and 20-35 in the winter. In appearance, egg laying is embryos in the form of a rounded oval with a width of 0.4 mm and a length of 0.8 mm. The pearly whiteness of an egg initially changes to a dark color as the embryo ripens.
2. Larva. Before pupation, 4 stages of molting take place. In the summer it takes 10-20 days, and in the winter 45-65. The caterpillar consists of three distinct segments. In the newborn state, its length is 2 mm, the color is pale, it is naked with 3 pairs of limbs and a dark head and scutellum. Ripening, the larva turns greenish (when feeding on root crops) or faded gray (when feeding on the vegetative part), overgrows with fine bristles and has a length of up to 12 mm.
3. Dolly. For this stage of the moth, it will take only 5 days in the summer season and as much as 2-3 months in winter.
4. Butterfly. Once out of the cocoon, the insect will not live long, only a few days, a maximum of a couple of weeks. During this period, she will lay up to 200 eggs after mating. The female makes masonry on the inside of the leaf, less often in the soil or tubers exposed from the soil. The number of eggs in one clutch is from 1 to 20.

The diet of the moth is unpretentious. The larva eats the inside of the leaf plates of potato tops. As a result, the ground part of the plant dries and then the pest moves to root crops, penetrates through the eyes or cracks and begins to actively gnaw the flesh.

Harm from the parasite

The most vulnerable plant is potato. The bushes of the plant weaken due to the partial or complete destruction of the foliage. Damaged tubers are not suitable for food, that is, the quantity of the crop and the quality of the vegetable are severely affected. The same goes for seed.

Signs of fluoridea damage:

• Spider web on potato bushes.
• "Mining" (ulceration) of the leaves.
• Dead stems.
• Strokes and wormholes in the peel and pulp of tubers.
• Rot at the site of damage.

Preventive and protective measures

If the affected crop is simply left in the ground or on the surface, then the larvae of the moth will simply climb into the ground and calmly winter there. So, next year on the plantation there will again be an invasion of the pest.Here's how to proceed:

The first to plant early ripening varieties on the site. They are completely immune to the pest. The next season, you can plant the usual variety. When using chemicals to exterminate moths, stop at Danadim, Ditoks, Di-68, Bi-58, Rogosei-S.