A potato beetle (right) feasting on my potato plant with a grasshopper.

By Susan Shanklin

I just was picking some asparagus. Hunting for the thicker stems, seeing it’s getting later in the season and I have to leave some to make healthy ferns to feed the deep roots for NEXT year.

I had an okay asparagus year. Plenty for everyday eating, a spit to give to our daughter in the Cities and a wee bit to freeze. I don’t think Tom fertilized last fall. He is making it a point to fertilize this fall, I know, seeing he longs all winter  for the first pick of asparagus with his morning eggs. The first fruit is always the best, but we still enjoy the latter fruit too.

Before I left to go to the lower garden that has the “row” crops like corn, dry beans and squashes, along with the grapes, I stopped in the backyard garden to look for potato beetles. Nasty things in my book. The birds won’t even eat them! This is my first year for them. I usually have the hoppers, but these orange spotted eating machines were eating our early potatoes that you can start digging on an as-needed basis around July 4…so they say up here in the Midwest.

Back to the eating machines on the potatoes. After I googled and identified the enemy, I needed to find out how to stop them and get rid of them. Seeing that Tom and I aren’t into toxic chemical pesticides, the alternative was hand picking and putting them in soapy water.

Now folks, I don’t mind bugs too much but these are kind of soft bodied and really, really ugly. When you pick them up, they curl up and wiggle their numerous short legs. If you are too “pinchy” they burst open and spill their orange guts on you. YUCK!

You can’t really wear gloves because it’s hard to pick a little bug off a leaf without dropping him. (All bugs are “hims”…just saying)

I got my tin can, filled it with soapy water and went out daily to turn over leaves and hunt for the enemy.

As I was walking through my garden, I saw the enemy on my eggplants…tiny ones…in their youth, waiting to devour more and more so they could grow bigger and bigger and eat more and more of my fruit!

Seeing they are so small, I squish them between folded leaves to their death. I have no mercy. This is MY garden!

Almost makes me feel good all over again. He, he.

One evening I was talking to Tom about my labor-intensive bug picking method and he said, “Why don’t you try using Diatomaceous earth?”

My mouth kind of drops open and me thinks, “Wow that’s a great idea!”

Diatomaceous earth is a natural product of the earth from sedimentary rock that is a super super fine powder that gets into the bugs’ shell layer and causes them to dehydrate. Yippee!

I use it on my chickens and their nest boxes for lice and I put it on Ella the dog and Percy the barn cat for fleas so why not put it on my plants!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There’s always a way to get rid of the enemy. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

I’m happy to report I didn’t see any potato beetles today.

All is well until the next attack, but I’m watching. I have my eyes surveying the gardens. I’m not sleeping through the season with my hands folded. No I’m a watching…but I ain’t worrying either.