Floating row covers work quite well as protection against the Colorado Potatoe Beetle, especiallu since potatoes do not depend on pollination to produce the tubers we eat. Put them on and leave until the threat is gone.

i used them for a couple of years and no longer do. they worked pretty well, but in the end i felt they were more trouble than they were worth to me, and i did get some beetle damage. possibly they would work better for a more attentive gardener. i had to lift them up in order to hill the potatoes at least twice. maybe beetles got in that way. or maybe they got in where the cover was imperfectly meeting the soil line. maybe there's an easy way to keep the row cover in place along the bottom, but i didn't find one. i used plastic hoops made into arcs about 2 1/2' or 3' tall and found that the plants started bulging through when they got tall, poking holes in the covers. after a few years of this, i decided to forgo them and try to hand pick the beetles. i usually plant about 40' of row, or 40 plants. it would take 2 to 3 hours once or twice a season to check every leaf bottom (sounds much worse than it is) and squash all the eggs. i was amazed at how successful that is. and you get to see the plants, rather than the row covers.

last year i did 3 things i'd never done before, and shockingly, i had NO beetles at all!! i don't know which factor it was, but this is what i did:
1) i planted the seed potatoes on june 15, (2 months later than usual)
2) i mulched the beds with straw (instead of hilling with soil) and mulched
the surrounding paths with straw too. i read that they don't like straw.
3) i planted 4 horseradish plants, one at each corner of the patch.

maybe by planting them late i missed the beetles' reproductive cycle. i don't know, but that's my best guess.

that's my experience. i'm sure some people have had better luck with the row covers. good luck!

I used them for about 3 years and quit using them not because of them being too much trouble but because the potato beetle population crashed and I no longer needed them for that purpose. After 5 years I started seeing the CPB's again on my taters but they did not get bad enough to warrent using row covers and than I moved the farm altogether last fall and I may well be using them again this season. We will see.

I found them to be a great pest deterrent on spuds

Here is a link that might be useful: Boulder Belt Eco-Farm Blog

ohio, you think the CPB population crashed? do you know what could cause this? is there a natural cycle or something? maybe that's why i didn't get any last year. maybe, if mine crashed, tho, it's because of all the hand picking of the eggs i did the past few years. maybe i picked them out of existence.

does anyone know anything about why a persistent beetle problem would disappear?