All season its been a battle with these bugs, I'm on the verge of ripping them out of the ground or cutting them off at the stem and throwing them all in my fire pit as the fire it raging just so I can watch all these darn beetles burn to death!!!
My potatos were doing awesome for the first month or so, they reached 2-3 feet tall, were so perfect looking, then the beetles came from nowhere, at first it was a few, and me and my younger kids would smash them all, we kept up the battle and won in the beginning. But after awhile I had to turn to neem oil, I was told to use this by a few diff gardeners.
I must say the neem oil did absolutely nothing... I diluted it down into spray bottles, and sprayed the heck out of my 20 foot row of potatoes... Then it rained hard. so the next day sprayed heavely again... I did not see much changed what so ever. sprayed again, repeat. Now we have had temps pretty much in the lower 90s for the past week or two. And the beetles have destroyed most of my plants. Its sad, before all you can see is foilage, now I can look straight through and see the soil...
So as of now, I can pretty much say I lost this battle, my plants can not recover in my eyes...
Maybe I have enough time to cut my losses and plant something else in the space before frost??? any ideas?
So the potato beetle only eats the leaves correct, they don't harm the patatoes?what I mean is they are still edible??
I'm sure I'm sacrificing potato size by pulling them, I dug down I little and was quite surprised by seeing the size of one of them, so...