Bacillus thuringiensis - San Diego.

There is an Organice chem (Bt) called colorado Potato Beelte beater Made my Bonide NY

Hand-picking is by far the most effective control for small patches. Sorry to hear you've been hit on your first year; usually folks get a year or two grace period. Is there long-established potato culture near you? In any case, the long-term fix is moderately rich very healthy soil for very robust plants - these resist the beetle much better.My potatoes in the home garden with much richer soil hardly have a beetle, and I'm on my 8th season. A complication is how to achieve this condition without raising the ph considerably and creating major scab problems. Inter-cropping should also help, this year I'm trying potatoes between garlic rows for example. Someone here on GW recently mentioned that green beans may help (I assume in acting as a trap).

you don't mention how many plants this effects. if it is just a few tomatoes and a few eggplants then hand picking will work. if this is a large garden then bt would be better.

if hand picking, the adults are best caught in the early morning before the sun is too high and when it is cooler. they are slow then otherwise they are hard to catch. i am not sure about this but the adults may suck fluids from the plants injecting disease. this is typical (cuke beetle) of beetles. the grubs are the real eating machines and can do a lot of damage. they can be crushed any time, look for defoliation then look carefully for the instar nymphs as they are called. also under the leaves look for orange barrel shaped eggs of the cpb and crush them too.

if you use bt be sure to buy the correct variety for cbp. i use a liquid concentrate i mix with water and spray. it will not kill the adults or eggs but does kill the nymphs. bt is washed off by rain and degrades in the sun. don't spray 12 hours before rain to give the nymphs a chance to eat leaves sprayed with bt and later afternoon is better due to less sun. bt is very effective. do not use it excessively, 1 good dose will really kill all nymphs. direct contact is not the way they die. eating the leaves and ingesting the bt shuts down their intestinal tract and they die.

tom

I don't have a lot of plants so hand picking them for now seems to be working. I take my soon to be 6 year old daughter out with me, I search and she destroys. She gets a kick out of it and it gives her something to do and she is learning about bad bugs already! It really seems to have slowed the invasion down!

Hand picking is best. You probably have discovered that you need to pick every two days to keep ahead of the larvae (which eat less individually but more in total). A heavy straw mulch helps to delay the onset of CPB, but it's a survivor. Regards, Peter.

This year I'm planning a trap crop of Datura. It's supposed to attract the CPB's away from the taters.

Datura is beautiful and I would love to grow them but they are toxic plants. I have pets and a small child. Can't chance it.

Datura is beautiful and I would love to grow them but they are toxic plants. I have pets and a small child. Can't chance it.

Over 50% of the plant we have in the common yard & garden has a toxic level.

I hand pick my 150' row of potatoes.

Are they this bad?

No they are not, up until this year I have had only a few horn worms, million squash bugs that I hand pick & kill egg with fingers.

But this year I have CPB, maybe because I had potatoes last year.

But I will hand pick Or plow the vines under, potatoes are cheap, even organic ones.

Yes, handpicking is the way. For the future enrich the soil with compost and minerals, as required by a soil test. I add a pinch of vitamin C in each hole, but only because I read the recommendation in an Arden Andersen book long ago. Regards, Peter.