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spotted cucumber beetle

15 years ago

I've had several healthy looking pods take a dive in one section of the pod. It shrivels and pulls the other sections over. The other day I noticed a fresh white scraped kind of spot on a pod....hmmmmm. I've seen these beetles on my blossoms, I thought they were cute, like green ladybugs.

Anyone else think they might be pod eaters?

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Comments (5)

Maryl (Okla. Zone 7a)
15 years ago
Cucumber Beetles have been as big a plaque for me as Japanese Bettles are in other gardens (we don't have them here yet Thank Goodness). The way they eat leaves the petals in shreds. Here is a picture of one on a rose petal. Note how the damage looks if they are left alone on the petal long enough. Not just a round hole, but rather they eat from top to bottom leaving a long slash in the petal. {{gwi:341791}}
jean_ar
15 years ago
I haven't seen any on the daylilies,but my roses has them.They get down in the bud and eat it up.

Jean
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Thanks for the feedback! I decided I didn't want to mess with them anymore so late in the season, so I just took off all my green tomatoes and brought them inside. Now I'm researching ways to ripen green tomatoes (I'm seeing newspaper is a popular method). But I will try the Sevin next year if I have the same problem. I'm going to try a non-heirloom variety next year to see if I have better luck. I did try taking a picture, but my camera is acting up and would not behave. I'm pretty sure it was the beetles. They would burrow their way inside and just eat themselves silly. Thanks!
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idaf
15 years ago
They were definitely here in Alabama this year. I only got to enjoy maybe half a bloom season before I realized what the culprit was and sprayed. By then it was too late. They would completely cover up an old bloom from day before and then they moved on to the fresh new blooms. The buds and blooms just dried up and dropped off. That is a good picture of the spotted cucumber beetle, Maryl. Next year I will be ready to take action before they destroy my garden. I found out they enter the soil to lay eggs and multiply and then come back in September with a new attack. So any reblooms are on the hit list. Ida
Maryl (Okla. Zone 7a)
15 years ago
If you look in the lower left, you will see two of the SOB's just barely peeking out from under a petal. They appear off and on all through the year, but fall is their prime season. I'm not much on using insecticides, but when they appeared in massive plague numbers 3 years ago, I tried spot applications of different insecticides to see what would kill them. Nothing except Pyrethins totally killed them dead. The others just knocked them down for a few minutes, but then they recovered and flew back up to the blooms. I ended up not using any insecticide at all that year and just suffering the loss. Actually roses were their 2nd choice on the menu. My sunflowers, asters, single petaled mums were first choice so I could definitely see them liking the single petals of a daylily. Fortunately I don't have any daylilies in bloom in October/November.
petalpatsy
Original Author
15 years ago
Thanks for the replies! That's very helpful Maryl, I've never sprayed anything before but they may push me to it. Right now I knock them down into the throat of the flower and use my reverse action tweezers to get them back out.

Satisfying, but I kill alot more time than beetles. :)

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