Faith's Farm OK: Potato Beetles, Residual Herbicide, and Blister Beetles

It's a 1-2-3 punch for this year's potato plants. My poor potatoes. They looked so beautiful when they first came up. Then they seemed to be struggling. They had curled leaves and were generally scraggly plants. Then the Colorado Potato Beetle arrived. The CPB laid eggs which hatched into pink slugs that tried to eat all the curled leaves.

I knew the curled leaves were not caused by the potato beetle so I did some searching and found that the curled leaves could be from a lack of water on the plants. Well, okay. But - we'd had plenty of rain and I'd watered when the rains didn't come. So, it had to be something else. It wasn't just affecting my potatoes though. The tomatoes and the lamb's quarter weeds were also affected. However, the corn seemed to be thriving. More research.

And then I found the pictures that looked like my plants. Herbicide damage. I don't use herbicide in my garden because that's just folly. But, the hay mingled with the composting sheep manure that we cleaned out of that barn had been treated with some kind of broad-leaf plant killer.

Now the blister beetles have arrived in the garden for this year. The striped blister beetle usually arrives in a swarm, descends upon an unsuspecting plant (or twelve), and reeks total havoc. They can strip a plant in less than 24 hours when it's a healthy plant.

My poor potatoes.