# My garden has been invaded by blister beetles!!! HELP!



## Ravenlost (Jul 20, 2004)

Last week we found a huge number of blister beetles in one of my raised beds. They had stripped the potato plants. I sprayed them with soapy water and we thought that was the end of them. NOPE...I guess they just moved. Now they are attacking my cantaloupe plants. They're the striped blister beetles which, according to what I've been reading online, are the most toxic of the blister beetles and can kill horses if ingested (we have five horses). 

How can I get rid of them short of using Sevin Dust? I need an organic solution. HELP! There are way to many of them for me to pick off (wearing gloves of course).









This isn't from my garden, but is exactly what they look like in my garden.


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## Pony (Jan 6, 2003)

Oh, my! That just gives me the willies something fierce!

YUCK!!

I just bought a bag of diatomaceous earth, and I'll be using that to thwart the dreaded cucumber beetle. If your nasty invaders have a soft belly, DE will work to stop their dastardly takeover.

Good luck, Raven. Those bugs look beyond nasty!

Pony!


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## Ravenlost (Jul 20, 2004)

They are nasty and I have several blisters to prove it! Guess I'll be wearing long sleeves and gloves in the garden until I can get rid of them. I found a "recipe" for natural insecticide that I am going to try:

1 TBS Canola Oil
1 TBS Baking Powder
3 TBS Tabasco Sauce
6 DROPS non-detergent dishwashing soap
Enough water to make 1 quart.

Sure hope it works because they are stripping my plants bare. I even found them on the marigolds yesterday! If they were looking for a fight, they found a WAR! :hobbyhors


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Having blister beetle around often means that there are a lot less grasshoppers. The young larva love to feed on grasshopper eggs. For the most part, they are considered a gardener's friend until the hungry adults show up! Normally they stay in the hay fields where their larval food supply lives.

Blister beetles are immune to most insecticides. Perhaps that's not so surprising to learn since anything that eats potato leaves can handle most other equally nasty stuff. Of the common available insecticides, Sevin is the most effective. A friend had a massive blister beetle problem for a short time last year. I'd never seen that many total in my entire life! He used a liquid Sevin spray and the ground literally turned black with their dead bodies. By then, his potato plants had been reduced to nearly bare stems. 

Martin


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## Ravenlost (Jul 20, 2004)

Martin...

My potato plants look like skeletons! I hate Sevin Dust though. My garden is totally organic and I want to keep it that way. My son almost died from Sevin Dust one time and I refuse to buy the stuff now. (I'd sprinkled some on the carport to combat a worm infestation from the oak trees. My son stepped out on the carport and had an anaphylactic reaction. He had stopped breathing when we arrived at the ER eight minutes later.) 

Part of the problem is my garden is in the middle of what used to be a hay field...okay, some of it still IS a hay field. We had a nice hard rain this morning so I'm hoping it washed some of them away. The rest I'll just have to squish I guess.


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## Kee Wan (Sep 20, 2005)

I found this on some other post here. It is organic and seems to hav eworked for me. Takes some time and isn't that cheap - but it IS organic.....

http://www.diatectresults.com/diatectv.html

See what you think.


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

If you have to get help in a hurry, use Sevin spray, not dust. Then there's no dust in the air. If you can't find that or don't want to use it, find any liquid insecticide with pyrethrin. Blister beetles are stubborn things but killing most of them will help. If you work quick, while there is still some green left, you may yet get a few potatoes.

I might add that you bought it on yourself by planting potatoes next to a hay field. You possibly just the field recently. Now the blister beetles are being forced to look elsewhere for their food. Our community garden complex also right next to a hay field and two gardeners have potatoes in the plots adjoining the field. We know what can happen and it's a wait and see for if the bugs show up again.

Martin


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## Ravenlost (Jul 20, 2004)

LOL...I have no choice! Our entire property and the property behind us is nothing but hay fields. We haven't cut our hay yet. I am right smack in the middle of over 150 acres of hay field!

During a break in the rain today I went out and harvested most of the potatoes (it started raining again before I finished). While there were quite a few small potatoes I would have liked to left to grow, I got a big tub full of large potatoes. All is not lost I suppose! I saw a few blister beetles, but not the swarms I had a couple days ago so I guess the dish soap mixture helped a bit. 

For health reasons (mine and my son's who does like to go out to the garden and help when he visits) I just can't put poisonous chemicals on my veggie garden. I do appreciate everyone's help and will definitely check out that link!


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