About two weeks ago I noticed flea beetle damage on three container grown egg plants placed together in my nursery area. At that time I separated the three plants several feet from one another but left them in the same nursery area. Also, I started hand picking the flea beetles daily. On day one, the three plants looked almost identical in the amount of damage. Here are three photos taken today.
You can't tell it by the photo, but based upon overall damage to the plant and the number flea beetles killed, this plant has been attacked a medium amount compared to the other two plants.
[img]https://farm3.static.flickr.com/2181/3538365703_2de146e275.jpg[/img]
This plant has been attacked by far the most, and all leaves look similar to this photo.
[img]https://farm3.static.flickr.com/2174/3539178312_e4a4c02a65.jpg[/img]
This plant, only about five feet away, has has very little activity since the plants were separated. Some additional critter does seem to be interested and has munched the larger holes.
[img]https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3584/3538366433_fbbc03f615.jpg[/img]
All three plants were placed among different kinds of plants in the nursery area, so the area is a bit like an interplanting zone with a scattering of various plants.
In terms of flea beetle control it seems significant to me that there is a large variation in the amount of flea beetle activity, when the plants have been separated even this small distance of five to seven feet from one another.
Here is a photo of another egg plant that is approximately fifty feet from the nursery area. There are two plants in this location, about 20 feet apart and neither has any sign of flea beetle damage. These are a different variety of egg plant, but flea beetles tend to love the plants just as much as the other variety, as evidence by previous year's experience.
[img]https://farm3.static.flickr.com/2425/3539180296_4fb594907a.jpg[/img]
My conclusions from this little experiment:
1) If you monitor your plants weekly, and catch flea beetles early, you can limit their damage simply by hand picking on young plants.
2) Placing the plants even small distances of 5-10 apart in your planting beds can have a significant effect on limiting widespread damage from flea beetles.
3) Placing plants at least 40-50 feet apart, may result in flea beetles ignoring some of the plants all together.
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hendi_alex
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applestar
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You know what? This is actually REALLY interesting.
We have tendency to plant eggplants together whether 3 plants or 50 and Tomato plants together, Lettuces together, etc. Of course there are good reasons for doing this, like sun and water requirements, uniform height, seed sowing and harvesting convenience, etc. but in a home garden, when you get right down to it, there's no good reason NOT to mix up the plants that have similar care requirements, especially when you're planting transplants.
There's also the tendency to plant in gradual increments of lowest growing plants to the tallest, but it's also possible to plant tall and short together -- e.g. lettuces between tomatoes, as long as there's room to walk around and harvest. I've been toying with interplanting companion plants as a design element for this year, but I believe I'll give it some more serious consideration.
We have tendency to plant eggplants together whether 3 plants or 50 and Tomato plants together, Lettuces together, etc. Of course there are good reasons for doing this, like sun and water requirements, uniform height, seed sowing and harvesting convenience, etc. but in a home garden, when you get right down to it, there's no good reason NOT to mix up the plants that have similar care requirements, especially when you're planting transplants.
There's also the tendency to plant in gradual increments of lowest growing plants to the tallest, but it's also possible to plant tall and short together -- e.g. lettuces between tomatoes, as long as there's room to walk around and harvest. I've been toying with interplanting companion plants as a design element for this year, but I believe I'll give it some more serious consideration.