Black jumping bugs with a shiny curved back attacking your garden are nothing more than the cruciferous flea beetle, a harmful, voracious insect of the leaf beetle family. In a short time they can destroy tender seedlings of cabbage, radishes, lettuce and other crops.
Flea is a dangerous pest
Still, the most favorite delicacy is cabbage. Measures should be taken immediately if cruciferous flea beetle appears on cabbage. How to deal with it? The bug stands out among other insects due to its jumping ability and shiny body. The small flea is just over 3 mm in size. For the winter, beetles hide under fallen leaves, shallow in the soil, and hid in the cracks of greenhouses and greenhouses.
Fleas wake up as soon as the soil thaws. First, they feed on weeds of the cruciferous family - shepherd's purse and rapeseed. As cultivated plants emerge and seedlings are planted, flea beetles move onto cabbage, radishes and other vegetables. Subject to destruction large areas garden crops with the onset of spring, sunny and hot weather. At this time, flea beetles are able to eat all cabbage seedlings and seedlings of other plants.
Insect species
There are several types of beetles. More famous is the light-legged flea beetle, which is wavy, blue and notched. The larvae are small white-yellow. They have three pairs of legs. The larvae live in the ground and eat the roots of cabbage and radishes. But the cruciferous flea beetle itself causes the greatest damage to plants. Beetles lay eggs in the soil. And only the light-footed one leaves its offspring on cabbage leaves. The larvae grow for about a month. Then in the soil they turn into adults, which are capable of destroying plantings in a couple of days.
After their invasion, the plantings have a characteristic appearance. The leaves become lacy. Sometimes only veins remain from plants. Insects can eat not only leaves, but also buds, flowers and pods. As soon as the first signs of insect infestation appear, it is worth starting to fight them immediately. In addition to cabbage, beetles are happy to try turnips, watercress, radishes, and radishes.
Fighting methods
To avoid insect infestations, prevention should be carried out. In the fall, the soil is dug up so that the wintering beetles end up on the surface and die when frost occurs. In spring, you need to minimize the appearance of cabbage weeds. From them, the cruciferous flea beetle will move on to the emerging cultivated plants. To repel insects, you can plant dill, coriander, tomatoes and potatoes around the beds. And also flowers: calendula, marigolds, nasturtium. These plants release substances into the air that beetles do not like.
Mass reproduction occurs in hot weather. At this time, young plantings are covered special material. It freely allows light, air and water to pass through, but interferes with the life of the flea. If insects do appear, you will have to use other methods. How to treat cabbage cruciferous flea beetle? For this purpose chemicals are used, traditional methods, infusions and decoctions of plants. Chemical method pest control is the most effective, but not harmless.
Chemicals
If it is absolutely necessary to treat plantings with insecticides, you should choose the most harmless ones. Since early vegetables, such as lettuce, radishes are used as food already at the beginning of summer. A chemicals control is used no later than 20 days before harvesting vegetables. The most commonly used drugs for cruciferous flea flea are "Bankol", "Actellik", "Inta-vira" and others. The drug "Bankol" is biologically active agent. Its basis is a substance prepared from marine annelids.
All chemical solutions Prepare immediately before use, strictly following the instructions. Spraying is carried out in the evening in calm weather, in compliance with safety measures. Chemicals should only be used as a last resort. 20 days before harvesting can be processed ( chemicals) cruciferous flea beetle on cabbage. How to deal with bugs that eat radishes early cabbage or salad? After all, these are early ripening vegetables.
Traditional methods of fighting insects
A fairly common folk remedy for cruciferous flea beetles. - This is the treatment of crops with a vinegar solution. Add a glass of vinegar of 9% concentration to 10 liters of water.
It is recommended to pollinate seedlings or seedlings using tobacco dust, wood ash, slaked lime or ground pepper. But these products only repel insects. Therefore, the procedure is repeated as often as possible, especially after watering. As a pollinator, you can take naphthalene and scatter it along the plantings (50 g per 10 m2). You can spray with infusion of ash.
Another method is to install sticky traps. Small shields made from scrap materials are smeared with glue and laid out between the rows. Insects stick and remain trapped.
The cruciferous flea beetle does not like watering. It is worth watering the cabbage beds more often. Fine-drip irrigation or simply spraying is especially good in this regard. cold water. You can add decoctions and infusions of plants that bugs especially don’t like to the water.
Helping plants
How to treat cabbage against cruciferous flea beetle using herbal preparations? Bugs are repelled by spraying with solutions containing infusions of ground garlic, dandelion leaves, and green wormwood herbs.
You can spray the plantings with the following warm composition: add one glass of ground garlic to 10 liters of water and tomato tops. Before using, let the solution steep for a while, strain and add soap to make it stick. Instead of tomato tops, you can use wormwood.
Flea beetles have a negative attitude towards plants of the nightshade family. Therefore, they use decoctions of tomato or potato tops. Grind 2 kg of fresh tomato plants, add half a bucket of water and leave for 3 hours. Then the infusion is boiled for half an hour. Add 2 parts of water and 20 g of soap to the strained broth for every 5 liters of the resulting product.
As raw materials for the decoction, you can try leaves and green shells (100 g) walnut. Boil the raw material in 2 liters of water for 5-7 minutes. To 10 liters of water you need to add 300 g of the resulting decoction.
How to understand that cruciferous flea beetles have firmly settled in the area? And it’s very easy - your plantings look something like this, and little black bugs with a curved shiny back are jumping among them.
cruciferous flea beetle on radish
You need to start fighting the cruciferous flea beetle as early as possible, this will make it easier to save the plants. This pest can completely destroy seedlings of cabbage, radishes, lettuce and other crops in a matter of days. Most often they settle on cabbage or radishes.
There are effective folk remedies from the cruciferous flea beetle, but the most strong remedies, of course, chemical. What to use is up to you.
How to deal with cruciferous flea beetle
1. Immediately after emergence, dust the plantings with wood ash or tobacco dust. Sprinkling the plantings helps a lot ground pepper And slaked lime. It is advisable to carry out such treatments after each watering, as long as you see that the pest is still present in the beds.
2. Spray the plantings with the bite solution, diluting a glass of 9% vinegar, or 1-2 tablespoons, into a bucket of water. spoons 70% vinegar essence.
3. Pass 1 cup of garlic and 1 cup of tomato leaves through a meat grinder. Dilute the mixture in 10 liters warm water, strain, add 1 tablespoon liquid soap. Spray with warm solution.
4. Spraying with infusion of garlic and wormwood also helps.
5. In the spring, plant marigolds, calendula and coriander around the beds with cruciferous vegetables; they repel flea beetles.
6. You can fight cruciferous flea beetle with naphthalene, just scatter the dry mixture along the beds (50 g of naphthalene will be required to treat 10 square meters of plantings)
Many gardeners immediately cover plantings with cruciferous plants with a covering material (lutrasil, spunbond or agrospam), this also helps protect against flea beetles. You can water the plants from above the material; it allows water, light and air to pass through well, but it prevents fleas from moving.
cruciferous flea beetles on eggplants
Among the chemical preparations for cruciferous flea beetles, you can use Actellik. Add 20 ml of this drug to 10 liters of water. For spraying 10 sq. meters of planting usually takes 1 liter of solution.
Do not use chemicals for early vegetables, for example, radishes - otherwise the chemicals will end up on your table.
Cruciferous flea beetle, photo
Please tell me how you fight cruciferous flea flea on garden plants? What helped you get rid of it? What folk remedies or chemicals would you recommend using to combat this pest?
Tender leaves of early shoots vegetable crops(lettuce, radish, spinach, radish) and seedlings of cruciferous plants (cabbage, beets, rutabaga), characterized by a short growing season, from the very first hours after planting in open ground are attacked by small bugs, to which many novice gardeners do not even pay serious attention.
After only a day or two, it turns out that the leaves of young plants are so badly damaged by these insects - cruciferous flea beetles that there is even a question about replacing seedlings. These pests are widespread throughout our country (except for the Far North); they cause significant damage in the north of the European part, in non-black earth and central regions, therefore considered one of the most dangerous pests cruciferous crops.
These small (2-3 mm in size) dark beetles jump quite high, like fleas, which is why they began to be called "cruciferous flea beetles", although according to taxonomy they belong to the genus Phyllotreta (family Leaf beetles). In the non-chernozem zone, cruciferous crops are affected mainly by six types of flea beetles, although, according to some experts, about 80% of total number These flea beetles in the middle, northern and western regions of the country are wavy (Ph.undulata Kutsch). The wavy flea beetle (2-2.8 mm in size) is black, with a yellow stripe on the outside of each elytra with a deep notch.
As soon as the snow melts, after leaving the hibernation, which the beetles spend in secluded places in the garden plot, most often under plant debris and fallen leaves, in surface layer garden soils, in the crevices of greenhouses and greenhouses, on forest edges, they feed on cruciferous weeds (colts, shepherd's purse, field rape, wild radish, yellowgrass, field grass). IN middle lane In the country, this period usually occurs at the end of April - beginning of May. With the advent cultivated plants the beetles fly to their foliage, from which they scrape off the top layer and gnaw out depressions along the edges of the leaves, as a result of which, if the damage is significant, the leaves dry out. On the more tender leaves of turnips and radishes, they gnaw through holes (1.5-2 mm in diameter). If the growing point is damaged, the seedlings can easily die. These beetles are most active in sundial days (periods from 10 to 13 am and from 16 to 18 pm), when the dew drops dry on the leaves. Insects are especially voracious in dry, hot weather and are capable of destroying completely young seedlings of cruciferous crops in a matter of days (sometimes even before the cotyledons appear above the soil surface). This is explained by the increased biological activity of fleas when high temperature(20°C and above) and inhibited development of plants during drought, which is why they do not have time to “escape” damage. During mass reproduction, cruciferous flea beetles quickly destroy cabbage seedlings, especially in the first 10 days, while they have not yet taken root after planting in open ground. Damage from beetles is also dangerous for young seedlings of radish and radish in the cotyledon and first true leaf phases. IN in some cases Cruciferous flea beetles also attack the hardened seeds of cruciferous plants, eating away small (1.5-2 mm in diameter) pits on buds, pods and leaves and significantly reducing their yield. In cool and humid weather their activity decreases.
In summer, flea beetles sometimes severely damage summer radish crops, as well as cauliflower seedlings. From flower plants Those most affected by this pest are most often called gillyflower and alyssum.
Females lay small yellowish eggs in the soil. For example, in the conditions of the Moscow region, the wavy flea flea lays eggs from the second half of June until the end of July. Eggs (0.3-0.4 mm) are light yellow, translucent, oblong-oval. The worm-like larvae, which hatch 4-10 days after laying eggs (depending on weather conditions), have a thin, long, light yellow body with three pairs of thoracic legs. The hatched larvae in the soil feed on small roots for 2-4 weeks or eat root crops at the root collar. After 8-12 days, new beetles emerge. Larvae pupate in the soil. A new generation of young beetles also feeds on cruciferous crops, and with the onset of cold weather they leave for the winter. Over the course of a year, all types of cruciferous flea beetles develop in one generation.
Measures to combat cruciferous flea beetles should consist of a complex of agricultural practices and methods of biological and chemical protection. In late autumn, you should carry out a deep digging of the soil in the beds where you grew cruciferous crops in order to turn the beetles that are preparing to hibernate to the surface of the soil - then they will die with the first cold weather. To prevent the mass appearance of fleas, it is recommended early spring promptly destroy weeds (especially from the cruciferous family) growing both on the site and on the periphery of the sites, on the roadsides: flea beetles feed and reproduce on it. Early boarding seedlings of cruciferous crops should be selected for cloudy weather, when beetles are not particularly active (sowing seeds at maximum early dates through greenhouses and greenhouses). On the other hand, sowing turnips and turnips in the middle and northern zone can be carried out in late dates- in June, when the number of flea beetles begins to decline.
In hot weather, nurseries and seedlings planted in open ground are shaded, for example, large leaves burdocks It is very important to ensure the implementation of agrotechnical practices that accelerate the growth and development of young plants: fertilizing with slurry, saltpeter or other nitrogen fertilizers, regular watering and loosening. There is evidence that spraying foliage with slurry and bird droppings solution has a negative effect on flea beetles. More developed and stronger plants are characterized by greater resistance to pest damage. The leaf surface of newly emerged seedlings and small cruciferous seedlings is sprinkled with ash or its mixture with tobacco dust (1:1). This procedure only temporarily repels flea beetles from plants, so it is repeated several times (usually immediately after watering the plants). On personal plots You can fight cruciferous flea beetles by catching them on plywood shields smeared on top with sticky substances - special long-lasting glue, resin or tar. Bottom side The shield in contact with the plants is not lubricated.
When the pest population is high, unfavorable conditions For young plants or large-leaved seedlings, it is still more advisable to spray with one of the insecticides. As effective insecticides in home garden practice trading network offers (per 10 liters of water): fufanon, kemifos, Iskra M, actellik. Consumption of working solution is 1 l / 10 m². Plantings are treated in the evening, when flea beetles are sitting quietly on the plants, but no later than 20 days before harvesting. Since some garden crops- Lettuce, radishes, celery, parsley begin to be eaten at the beginning of summer, but still you should not treat these plantings with pesticides, it is better to spray the plants with an infusion of ash or a decoction of tomato plants. In the evening, a glass of ash is poured into 9 liters of water, stirred, allowed to settle until the morning, after which all the liquid above the sediment is drained and, if necessary, filtered. Or this composition: 2 kg of the remains of fresh tomato plants or 0.5 kg of its dry mass are poured into 5 liters of water, infused (3-4 hours), then boiled over low heat (green mass - 30 minutes, dry mass - 2-3 hours ); filter, dilute with water (1:2) and add soap (20 g per 5 liters of solution). And the plants are treated against cruciferous flea beetles.
Alexander Lazarev,
Candidate of Biological Sciences,
senior researcher at VNII plant protection,
Pushkin
