Ever since the first year we grew, or should I say tried to grow, potatoes (& when I learned the hard way about these ravenous pests!), I'm always on the look out for adults as well as eggs and larvae. Once our potatoes get growing, Colorado Potato Beetles are almost always a problem, but with daily checks, usually a manageable problem in our home garden.
Seed potatoes, though, have their own set of problems here and they all revolve around crows. We live in a rural area and have a lot of crows. In the past, we have had a terrible time with crows digging up our seed potatoes and pecking them to death. So, we now lay deer netting on top of where we plant our seed potatoes and put some pots under it to lift it off of the ground while securing the sides. This seems to work pretty well and we haven't lost many potatoes to the crows.
There is a time element to the process though, and the netting needs to be put in place immediately. This year, we took a not-so-short coffee break after planting our seed potatoes and, although we layed the netting down on top of the potatoes, we decided to come back to raise up the netting up off the ground after our break. Of course, the moment we went inside, the crows immediately stopped by for an afternoon snack. By the time we came back out to the garden, there were three seed potatoes on the surface with their insides, well, gone. **SIGH**
As troubling as this was, I was almost more horrified to see a few adult Colorado Potato Beetles eating (?) the seed potatoes the crows had dug up. I mean, it's April! and these are seed potatoes with no leaves! What the heck are these adults doing here and how did this find our potatoes within a few hours of planting them?
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