Attack of the Beetles Part II

Enemy #1: Flea Beetles
Battle outcome: Victory!
Recap:
1)I found out flea beetles rarely actually kill the tomato (but they do destroy most lower leaves)
2)I transplanted my tomatoes in the garden after they were a bit bigger (>=10 in?) so even though they had fewer leaves after transplanting (since I buried the stems for stronger root system), I guess they had enough size and reserves to persevere through the flea beetle stress.
3)Diatomaceous earth! This is the best stuff ever! I had read that DE - a powder made of the fossilized shells of diatoms, super cool little phytoplankton of whom I've long been a fan - was good for flea beetle control; it's absorptive properties dehydrate them. Just when I was sitting in my garden, thinking to myself, "I really wish I had some diatomaceous earth!" but not wanting to go buy a big bag for a just a few sprinkles of it, a guy walked up with a sifter of diatomaceous earth, introduced himself, and let me use some. I love the community gardens! So I sifted some on the tomatoes that were having problems and there has been very little flea beetle damage since.

Enemy #2: Striped Cucumber Beetle
Battle outcome: ongoing, looking at possible shameful defeat
Recap:
1) They keep breeding! A first generation emerges from overwintering in the soil, has the gall to mate all over my tomatillo, lay eggs, and then develop again in the soil, come out, breed... I think I'm seeing the second generation now. I've noticed a few smaller beetles, who look exactly like the adults except their black stripes are backed by gray, not yellow - I'm guessing these might be the youngins??
2)There's no good leave-on organic control for cuc beetles that I can find... There are some organic options, but they only work on contact with the beetles, meaning you can only possibly get the ones you spray directly. The other 23.9 hours of the day, they're all living the hedonistic beetle life on my plants.
I tried pyrethrin, (ex: Safer insecticidal spray) an insecticide derived from the crysanthemum family. It's certified organic, and usually mixed with an insecticidal soap. When I spray individual beetles, I've seen about 50% instant knock-down. But I'm not sure if I'm killing them or just temporarily inconveniencing them, giving them a renewed resolve to survive and breed more...
3)They really like smaller plants, especially cucumbers (surprise). They are not doing too much damage to my tomatillo anymore. It's pretty big, and apparently it was not their first choice in dining. I had been protecting the five-star meals inside walls of water and since I've taken off the walls, it's been an feeding frenzy. They eat the flowers and new shoots, and they very well might kill one of my cucumber plants.
4) I'm going back to physical blockage. I put the most victimized cucumber plant back in a wall of water with some cheesecloth over the top (so there's more room within the wall but the beetles are still blocked), as shown in the pic (of my patty pan squash they are also attacking) The other cucumber and melon are too big to fit within a wall of water anymore, so I might get some of the rowcover material and make a tent for them. It's their only hope.

Tutorial: Early season techniques

This is my experience with how to plant warm-season vegetables dangerously close to the last frost date and not kill them. This year, I've used walls of water and black plastic mulch to protect seedlings.

Prologue: My seedlings were all at least 5 in high (some larger as I was too optimistic about the last frost) when I transplanted them into the garden. I started some plants from seed indoors and bought some seedlings from a local nursery, and others online because I thought I wouldn't be able to find them locally.

Both walls and mulch help early in the season by raising the temperature around plants (walls of water) and raising soil temps (black mulch). Cold temps can stress plants, kill them (less than 40f can kill peppers, for instance), or reduce nutrient uptake resulting in slowed or stunted growth. We sure need it here at 5000ft, as it got into the 30's (F) at night well into mid-May.

Walls of water: They are the turquoise teepees in the pic, available at your garden store $7 per 3 walls. Ouch! But worth it if you insist on trying to improve upon nature as I do. One 'wall' is a plastic cylinder of connected cells that you fill with water. The water absorbs the sun's heat all day, and radiates it back to the plant at night. The package says you can transplant plants up to 6-8 weeks earlier using walls, but I'm a bit skeptical of that, especially when 6-8 weeks earlier means frost/snow and many vegetables can't handle temps below 40 or 45F (that's a claim of ~10F temp increase). However, I think you can get closer to these figures by completely encasing the plant: if you only fill the cells 2/3-3/4 full of water, the cylinder will lean in on itself to form the teepee shape you can see in the pic. When closed off like that, it forms a mini-greenhouse around the plant. I'm using the teepees with black mulch, and when I open the top and stick my hand in, it's a regular sauna in there. Steamy and hot. The steamy part is becoming a problem for my squash as it's providing a quite hospitable environment for powdery mildew, but that's another post.

Now that it's mid-June - warmer, and some of the squash plants are getting bigger - I want to open the teepees and reposition them so they are cylinders, open on the top for more air-flow and space within. However, I found that the teepees protected many plants from early flea and cucumber beetle infestations - which are not over - so I'm torn as to exactly how to proceed...

Black Plastic Mulch: Basically, an impermeable soil covering that absorbs the sun's heat (because its' black) and transfers the heat to the soil, raising soil temps to help warm-season vegetables get a head start. Also helps with moisture retention and weed control, as do all mulches :) (Other mulches, like straw, are better later in the season, once the weather has warmed up, since they help keep soil temps more stable i.e. cooler)

Trash bags, the poor man's mulch! Actually, I first bought some black plastic from the local hardware store. All they had was 4mil and it was quite thick. I read several places that the mulch needs to have good contact with the soil in order to transfer heat it's absorbing from the sun, and 4mil was too thick to wrap around all the bumps in the soil. Then I realized black trash bags were the perfect 1-2mil thickness I had been looking for. So, I now have 2 beds covered in 4mil and the rest in 1mil (total: $7, not bad!) We'll see if it makes a difference, but I doubt it: all the mulch has lost contact with the soil since so many weeds are growing under it and pushing up on it(sickly, white weeds that will never see sun, heehhee). I'm finding that it's still quite the sauna under the mulch anyway.

When you are laying down the mulch, you'll need to cut holes for plants. I had already planted a few seedlings, so this involved some estimation of exactly where the hole needed to be to accurately accommodate the stem. Thankfully trash bags tear easily, although strangely, in only one direction... Secure the plastic to the edges of the bed with garden stakes so it lays flat and tight over the bed.

I put the walls of water up May 18 I think, when I first planted a few plants (tomatoes and a couple of peppers). I put the rest up May 25 when I planted squash and eggplant, and the tomatoes lost their walls then b/c I didn't have enough. I put the mulch down, in parts, the last couple of weeks of May.

Not sure how long I'll leave all this stuff on, but hopefully it's helping. I have a 'control' eggplant at my house (no need to get into the messy variables of house vs. garden, container vs. ground, okay?) that has neither mulch nor walls, and several 'control' tomatoes at my house that did not have black mulch like the garden ones do. The control tomatoes also didn't have a flea beetle infestation, but hey, that's why experimental writeups have a discussion section, for all the disclaimers and possible explanations for your unexplainable results ;)

Attack of the Beetles!!!!

I went out of town for 6 days. 6 days! Everything was fine when I left... I covered most plants with walls of water and the raised beds with black plastic mulch (known in lay terms as cut up trash bags :).

I came back from out of town to flea beetles and cucumber beetles attacking the plants that weren't protected by walls of water. They must have hatched/matured in the 6 days I was gone! There were 2 tomatoes (my Moonglow heirloom, no!!!), a tomatillo, and a few peppers uncovered. The tomatoes and tomatillo were getting devoured!

Flea beetles are very little black bugs that leave tiny buckshot holes in leaves. They also jump like fleas. You can see a couple on the rightmost leaf in the pic.

(Striped) cucumber beetles are a bit bigger, yellow with distinct black stripes (The stock pic shows both spotted and striped). They eat big holes through leaves, mate all over my tomatillo, and leave clumps of orange eggs on the undersides of leaves. The worst part is that they spread bacterial wilt, which can kill the whole cucumber or squash plant. I've only noticed them on the tomatillo so far (since all my squash are in a walls of water teepees) but this could be a bad situation since 1/3 to 1/2 of my garden is curcurbits of various kinds.

The community gardens are all organic, so no killing them with technology (can I blind them with science?) .... but there's several organic options available. I'll post soon what works for me.

Inventory

It's quite ridiculous, considering the amount of space I have. But plants are like crack to me... just one more.... and I have a friend who's similar. She gave me 30-40 new seedlings a couple of weeks ago which were quite etoliated (spindly from not enough light) but I repotted and gave them more light, so they're making a nice recovery now.

Tomatoes

1. Stupice (early-season heirloom, for grafting purposes)
2. Better Boy (hybrid,which I divided into 3 pots)
3. Moon Glow (orange heirloom, planted in garden 5/18?)
4. Early Girl (hybrid, so I'd have at least a couple plants that are successful!)
5. Opalka (paste heirloom)
6. Black from Tula (heirloom) in upside-down pot
7. Yellow Boy (VFN) in upside-down pot
8. Cavern (heirloom) (2)
9. Brandywine (heirloom) (1 from work, 4 from Elizabeth)
10. San Marzano (for paste) (2?)
11. Bush Cherry (3)
12. Large Cherry (2)
13. Marvel Stripe (2)
14. Green Zebra (4)
15. Persimmon (1)
16. Black Krim (2)
17. Big Beef (4? from Elizabeth, more to be indeterminate grafting rootstock)
    
18. Costaluto (1)
19. Ace (lots)
20. Italian Roma (4?)
21. Blue Fruit
22. Black Ethiopian
23. Carbon
24. Vintage Wine
25. Big White pink stripe
26. Chocolate stripe
27. Indian moon (native american heirloom!)
    
28. Blondkopfchen (yellow cherry)
29. Tlacolula Ribbed (mexican heirloom!)
30. Pineapple
31. Zapotec pleated (mexican heirloom!)
32. Celebrity (hybrid determinate, to be grafting rootstock)

Eggplant

1. Fairy Tale
2. Rosa Bianca
3. Gistada de Liada

Peppers

1. Early Jalapeno (4)
2. senorita Jalapeno
   
3. regular jalapeno
   
4. Habanero (3)
5. Tomatillo (2 pairs)
6. Black bell (1)
7. Pasilla (1)
8. Serrano (few)
9. Poblano (1)
10. Hungarian wax (1)
11. Thai ornamental (1)
12. tabasco
13. red demon thai
14. piquin
15. santa fe
16. cayenne
17. fresno
18. jamaica hot
19. anaheim
20. marconi

Curcurbits

1. Delicata squash (winter, big)
2. patty pan squash
   
3. papaya squash
4. armenian yard-long cucumber
5. marketmore cucumber
   
6. noir des carmes, some fancy french heirloom melon

Herbs

1. fine verde basil
2. genovese basil
3. summer savory
4. rosemary
5. cilantro
6. oregano
7. lavender
8. thyme
9. chocolate mint
10. peppermint
11. catnip

Strawberries

1. Alpine 1
2. Alpine 2
3. Ozark Beauty (1)
4. Quinalt (4)
5. Sarian (1)
   

Other

1. okra
2. red onion
3. nasturtium
4. morning glory
5. moonflower
6. mexican marigold
7. Taiyo giant sunflower
8. Velvet Queen sunflower
9. Strawberry blonde sunflower