Pinkcat, I know the feeling about using sevin. don't get me wrong, but if you have to use sevin, liquid is better. You must throw the DUST container out. It is really toxic to bees! our local extension and bee Keepers are always trying to educate people to avoid the DUST. Liquid is a little better... Anyway I had bought this product online called PYOLA from garden's alive which is organic(basically pyrethrin mixed in canola oil) which seems to work on the flea beetles. It says broad sprectrum, so I am hoping it will work on CUcumber beetles, bean beetles and all kinds of caterpillar and moths! So lets see how that goes. But for now the flea beetles have gone down. But we have to keep spraying after each rainfall. I don't mind that at all as long as it keeps the bugs under control. Also it says on the bottle that one can use it upto the day of harvest and on the whole 10 applications in the entire growing season. This is not bad compared to SEVIN or Malathion which have only 2-3 application in the entire growing season and you have to wait for a few days before you harvest your vegetables!

I probably would have assumed the same thing. I think they are active during the day, but I don't really see many flea beetles here at all, so I'm just guessing about that. There are many different species of flea beetles and different ones are active on different kinds of plants. How much to worry about the damage they are doing would just depend on various factors including whether they are damaging a plant enough that its growth is stunted? Or, does the plant continue to grow and produce just fine? Most of the time, the damage is just a matter of appearance, except that when flea beetles hit seedlings or very small plants early in the season, they can damage them enough to kill them. Your description of the leaf damage sounds exactly like the damage that flea beetles do. Flea beetles are not always easy to see. I suspect they are smart enough to hide when people are around. If you can walk quietly into the garden and approach plants with flea beetles on them within them becoming aware you're getting close to them, often it startles the flea beetles and they sort of hop up into the air as they attempt to flee (pun intended) once they are aware of your presence. The thing that puzzles me about you seeing flea beetles this late in the summer is that, at least in my part of the state, they are mostly a late winter/early spring pest. Of course, this has not been a normal weather year and some kinds of flea beetles can remain active at least into June...which wasn't all that long ago. If y'all have had fairly abundant rain and cooler than average weather, even prior to this week's cold front, then I imagine the flea beetles still are active. In our climate, we can have several generations of flea beetles each year. There are some foliar diseases whose damage also could give your plant foliage that buckshot appearance, so I do think it is important to try to determine if you are seeing flea beetle damage or a foliar disease. Some of the bacterial diseases that cause foliage to have specks or spots often do progress to tissue necrosis where the tissue within the specks or spots does die and fall out, leaving a bunch of holes that can mimic flea beetle damage. Normally, though, with those bacterial diseases you'll see dark specks or spots on the leaves before the necrosis occurs. So, with the damage you're seeing, do you see bacterial speck or bacterial spot on the foliage before the holes appear? Both of those can affect plants in the solanum family, which includes tomatoes and ground cherries.

but they are wreaking serious havoc on my eggplants (all the leaves are covered in tiny holes). ==>>> tiny holes and serious damage.. dont quite equate in my book ... they may not look pretty ... but are the leaves failing???? .. are they skeletonized???? could we see a pic ... we have to start with ruling out some cosmetic damage.. as compared to damage that effects the plant ... at least i would ... i dont get to overly concerned.. by august.. that plants get tired.. or i should say.. 'look' tired ... or have cosmetic damage ... ken

Pcola - the small black specs might be young flea beetles but the damage to the leaves in the pics isn't typical of flea beetles. It could also be aphids or spider mites or any number of other common small insect pests. Or it could be nothing more than some sort of mild environmental damage and that is what it looks like to me. Plus even if you can determine that it is flea beetles then they are not a major pest and almost impossible to control anyway so most of us just live with them. Most importantly, the damage you show is very minor and poses no threat to the plant. So it isn't something to be overly concerned about unless it got substantially worse and trying to intervene without actually knowing the cause usually only makes things worse. Just relax and keep an eye on it. Dave