Controlling the cucumber beetles is vital for the garden in case you plant melons, cucumbers, or perhaps squash. And the Damage from cucumber beetles are able to destroy these plants, but with controlling some cucumber beetle, you are able to prevent the harmful insects from ruining the cucumbers and cucurbit crops.
What is a Cucumber Beetle?
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Cucumber beetles are generally brilliant yellow, have extended antennae in the front side, and are about one-quarter inch long. They’re winged, making it easy to fly around from growing to growing, and extremely hard to capture.
You are going to find 2 different types of cucumber beetle – striped as well as spotted.
And the spotted cucumber beetle is often greenish-yellow and possesses 12 black spots on its rear. Then, the striped cucumber beetle is usually yellowish yellow and has 3 gray stripes on its rear.
It’s very easy for people to make a mistake of identifying the spotted cucumber beetles and ladybugs as they’re similar at very first glance.
And ladybugs have short antennae as the cucumber beetle has a long string like antennae.
Do cucumber beetles bite people?
Cucumber beetles do not bite, sting, or perhaps poison humans. They are harmless but irritating creatures.
The main target is not other than your cucurbit crops (squash, tomato, eggplant, corn, cucumber, melon, etc.). And in case a striped cucumber beetle discovers its way into the house, you are able to remove it the traditional method with a paper napkin easily.
Additionally, they do not bring some diseases to people, unlike various other “dirty” beetles as dung beetles.
Nevertheless, cucumber beetles do deliver diseases to the plants. They are able to move bacterial wilt and cucumber mosaic rapidly among almost all the plants.
And so while they are harmless to people, they must be handled immediately to protect plants.
What do The Cucumber Beetles Eat?
Some other than the transparent cucumbers, which they are called after, cucumber beetles tend to be fond of corn and cucurbits as their main crops. Nevertheless, based on the variety, the coming plants might be impacted:
Cucumber, lettuce, onion, okra, beet, pea, mulberry, bell pepper, watermelon, peanut, amaranth, cabbage, wheat, sorghum, rice, cassava, tomato, sweet potato, grape, potato, beans, cotton, soybean, corn, pumpkin, gourd, squash, cantaloupe, oats.
The Damage of Cucumber Beetles
Cucumber beetles are going to eat fruit, flowers, and the leaves of the bean, eggplant, corn, asparagus, melon, cucumber, and squash crops, and the larva of theirs will chew on the origins of these plants. While there’s a little damage from this on the plants, the actual reason that the control of cucumber beetles is crucial to a garden is simply that cucumber beetles are carriers of cucumber mosaic and cucumber bacterial wilt, which influences cucumbers, melons, and squash. They affect cucumbers probably the most. Cucumber mosaic and cucumber bacterial wilt are able to survive in the body of cucumber beetles, and then as cucumber beetles can move from place to grow, these diseases are spread to the crops they eat. When a plant is afflicted with either bacterial wilt or perhaps cucumber mosaic, it can’t be cured and will also die or become unproductive after being infected.
Read More: How to Get Rid of Carpet Beetles Naturally
How you can Eliminate Cucumber Beetles Naturally
It is essential to get rid of these as quickly as you notice them. Today, you are probably asking how you can eliminate cucumber beetle infestations in the garden of yours. Continue reading as I teach you not merely how you can eliminate cucumber beetles, but how you can design your garden less of a goal!
- Use Insect Barrier
You are able to make use of insect barrier cloth to coat cucumber plants to help keep the bugs from going away towards them. Unfortunately, this can also block out pollinators, which means you might have to eliminate the barrier in early morning hours to enable pollinators to use the blooms.
- Use Trap Crops
You are able to grow trap plants out into the garden before you plant your cucumber.
Blue hubbard squash is an excellent capture harvest for cucumber beetles since it produces an impressive quantity of cucurbitacin starting once the plants are only two weeks old.
Plant these host plants in the garden and observe them for clues of cucumber beetles.
Then, put yellow sticky traps across the plant to help capture the adult cucumber beetles once they begin showing up in the garden. Then dust the plants properly with diatomaceous earth to eliminate the rest.
- Use Specific Organic Pesticides
The organic pesticides may also be used in a controlled fashion to minimize cucumber beetle populations. Insecticidal soap and neem oil may be used to help eliminate cucumber beetles.
These pesticides function by smothering and ensure to layer the insect pests with insecticidal soap or the neem oil.
- Attract Beneficial Insects
If some plant flowers are around your garden, your veggie garden to entice beneficial bugs, assassin bugs, lacewings, like ladybugs, as well as solider beetles into the garden. These helpful insects pray on the cucumber beetles allowing it to lower the numbers of cucumber beetles.
- Remove all of the egg clusters.
The simplest method to remove the eggs is just to cut out each group of eggs.
You are able to tear them away, but I discover that using scissors lowers the destruction of the plants. Cut out each group of eggs and place them in a pail.
Be sure you dump your bucket Very a long way away from the garden. And not in the compost pile. The trick here’s to get rid of the eggs forever, so dumping things near will increase the chance that the beetles return.
- Repeat the egg hunt daily
The cucumber beetle eggs are small, so the likelihood that you are going to get them all is very difficult.
Add cucumber beetle hunting to the garden and prevent them from entering.
Does neem oil kill the striped cucumber beetles?
Neem oil is going to kill striped cucumber beetles in touch. It is made by the neem vegetable and is an organic or natural entirely method to eliminate cucumber beetles.
And the neem oil is extremely concentrated and will burn the plant if used in very high dosages. It’s precisely why you have to make the solution adequate to kill beetles, although not too powerful to kill the plants.
Cucurbit plants are very vulnerable, so this helps make using neem tricky.
Always test it on one leaf before using it to the whole plant. You have to give it a couple of days to see the way it reacts.
Neem is sticky and will go out of a residue that’ll keep going for a couple of days if unwashed. For the majority of plants, this’s Ok.
But for cucurbits, I would suggest rinsing the plant instantly once you spray the neem. Making it on the leaves might result in burning as the leaf is covered by it.
You are able to purchase neem oil from specialty shops. It’s available in a small bottle with very concentrated portions, so you will have to dilute it appropriately.
There are lots of recipes for creating your very own pest killer that you are able to use online. Always examine all warnings before using it.
How you can keep the striped cucumber beetles away from your Garden
Before you plant, search for specific plant varieties which are reluctant to cucumber beetles. In case you already realize that there are cucumber beetles in the area, you might want to try those varieties. Meanwhile, the best bet is usually to keep them from actually reaching the plants in the very first place!
Treat the plants to a dusting. And this kaolin clay foliage a film behind on the foliage of plants which insects do not love to lay eggs on or perhaps eat. I suggest Surround WP, a commercially available source of kaolin clay intended for use on plants.
And using floating row covers, like Harvest Guard, works very well to help keep adult beetles arriving at the plants. In case they cannot reach the plants, they cannot place eggs on them! You’ll either have to hand pollinate the plants or even take out the row covers whenever they flower. Otherwise, bees will not be able to attain the plants either.
There is research into utilizing vermicompost as fertilizer rather than using the natural slow-release chemical fertilizers. It shows the striped cucumber beetle is much less apt to strike plants grown in a vermicompost rich plot. Scientists think this could be resulting from a rise in phenolic compounds in plants raised with vermicompost. Then, since vermicompost is an excellent choice as being a fertilizer, try it!
