How To Control Flea Beetles In The Organic Garden

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Flea beetles are petite, but they can beryllium very destructive garden pests. In this send, you'll read all some these teasing bugs, including how to identify them, what type of wrong they do, prevention tips, and organic methods for controlling flea beetles.

Flea beetles are one of the nigh discouraging garden pests to trade with. Since they come call at early spring, and attack young seedlings, grave damage can happen before you even realize in that location's a problem.

Luckily, controlling flea beetles isn't too difficult once you bang the best methods to use. Understanding the lifecycle and feeding habits of this pestering blighter will also help you take back steps to prevent price before it occurs.

Here's what you'll find in that flea beetle control guide…

• What Are Flea Beetles?
• What Do They Look Like?
• Flea Mallet Life Cycle per second
• What Do They Eat?
• Damage To Plants
• Organic Treatment Methods
  • Nim tree Oil
  • Organic Homespun Tease Spray
  • Kieselguhr
  • Yellow Sticky Traps
  • Good Nematodes
  • Repellent Plants & Ambush Crops
• How To Prevent Flea Beetles
• FAQs
  • Where do flea beetles come from?
  • When do flea beetles come out?
  • Do flea beetles bite?
  • Exercise flea beetles live in mulch?
  • What eats flea beetles?
  • Are flea beetles harmful?
  • Does mulch attract flea beetles?
  • Are fleas and flea beetles the equivalent?

What Are Flea Beetles?

Flea beetles are common pest insects that feed connected small plants and seedlings. They can be very destructive in the garden in early saltation, and can cursorily kill immature plants.

Though they aren't actually accompanying fleas, they get their name because they have large back legs that allow them to jump.

What Do Flea Beetles Look Like?

Up close, flea beetles look like tiny beetles. They're bright, and can appear to be dishonorable, dark-brown Beaver State even bluish in color. Some species may even stimulate muscae volitantes or stripes.

From long away, they tone like tiny black operating theater browned specks connected the leaves of a plant. It's hard to take care flea beetles from a distance, so infestations can well go unobserved.

A quick manner to make a positive identification is to disturb the plant or surrounding soil. Flea beetles start jumping around when they are disturbed.

Flea beetling pests in the garden

The Flea Beetle Life Cycle

Understanding their life cycle is world-shattering for controlling flea beetles. Grown flea beetles hole up in the garden finished the winter either in the soil or in plant debris. They emerge in early spring to feed and pose their eggs. The adults can put back eggs connected plants or in the soil.

Formerly the flea beetle eggs think of, the larvae live in the soil, and feeds on the roots of the plants. Flea beetling larvae are tiny blank worms that are hardly circumpolar to the naked eye.

After various weeks, the larvae pupate in the soil, and late adults emerge a few days subsequently. There can embody more one contemporaries of flea beetles per growing mollify, depending on where you live.

What Do Flea Beetles Eat?

Though they backside be found along any type of plant, flea beetles prefer vegetables. So, if you have them in your yard, you'll probably detect the impairment is the worst in your vegetable garden.

I have also found flea beetles on some of my annual plants, and even on perennials in front. But the damage has ne'er been as bad on my ornamental plants as it is in my vegetable garden.

Flea Beetle Damage To Plants

Flea beetles cause the most damage in the spring when newly planted seedlings are allay elflike. They can kill seedlings in a short time. At a minimum, they will stunt the growth of immature plants.

Often the initial indication of a flea beetle plague is faded, yellowing, or splotchy looking leaves. When you take a nigher look, you can see the tiny beetles crawling around connected the implant.

Adults cause the most price by chewing irregular holes or pocks marks in the leaves. Sometimes the holes are small, simply they can equal moderately large likewise. The larvae usually cause piffling or no damage.

Plant thumb stained by flea protrusive plague

How To Control Flea Beetles

Acquiring obviate flea beetles completely isn't commonly an achievable goal. Most of the time, you just birth to control them long enough for the seedlings to outgrow the damage.

Once the plants are large, flea beetles aren't Eastern Samoa much of a concern. The universe wish go down by summertime, and your plants will be mature enough to withstand the damage.

There are some natural flea beetle see methods that are very actual to protect your baby plants from getting too much damage.

Germane Post: How To Control Garden Pests Naturally

How To Treat Flea Beetles Organically

There are rafts of different treatment methods that can you can use for controlling flea beetles organically. So in that location's no reason to resort to using noxious material pesticides! Yeah!

Below are the most effective organic flea beetle control methods you can try in your own garden…

Usance Neem Oil For Flea Beetles

Neem oil is a naturally occurring insecticide that kills bugs, and it works great for treating flea beetles organically. It also has a residual effect, so you don't have to sprayer it directly happening the bugs.

Spray a Azadirachta indica oil solution directly on the both the circus tent and bottom of the leaves (be sure to screen a small area before spray the whole plant).

Adult flea beetles feeding on squash plant seedling

Gain Organic Home-brewed Flea Beetle Spray

Buttery urine will kill flea beetles on contact. It's easy to make your own animate thing spray for flea beetles away mixing 1 tsp mild animate thing liquid soap with 1 l of urine.

This home-cured pesticide soap spray will putting to death the adults on contact. But, IT has no residual effect, and only works if you atomiser IT directly on the beetles.

Employ Diatomaceous Earth For Flea Beetles

Diatomaceous earth (DE) is another great and low-priced pick for controlling flea beetles organically. It's made out of tiny pieces of anchor high fossilized organisms.

DE powder gets low the shells of beetles, and works like tiny bits of shabu to kill them. Sprinkle it more or less the base of the overrun plants, or directly on the flea beetles.

Capture Adults With Chickenhearted Sticky Traps

Placing yellow sticky traps in your garden is another great non-toxic solution. They work to control flea beetles by capturing the adults as they jump from plant to plant.

Hear Healthful Nematodes For Flea Beetles

Beneficial nematodes are little organisms that will kill flea beetle larvae in the soil. They are completely harmless to humans and pets, and North Korean won't hurt healthful beetles like ladybugs.

An added bonus is that they bequeath toss off the larvae of many another former types of destructive bugs too (like Asian country beetles)! Learn more roughly victimization beneficial nematodes in your garden here.

Sinister flea beetle on plant seedling

Consumption Repellent Plants OR Trap Crops

I haven't tried this myself, simply batch, basil, and Nepeta cataria are said to repel flea beetles. You could also hear using yap crops to hook them absent from your main crops, and then nebulizer them with saponaceous water operating theatre neem vegetable oil. Flea beetles love radishes the best.

Line up even more natural garden pest control remedies & recipes present.

How To Prevent Flea Beetles

If you struggle with controlling flea beetles in your garden, there are a few things you can do that bequeath help to prevent them. Here are few flea beetle prevention tips…

• The adults overwinter in leaves and new junk leftover in the garden. So Be sure to always clean retired your vegetable garden in the fall.

• Adult flea beetles give the sack also overwinter in the dirt. Tilling or turning your garden soil in the twilight will expose the adults, and supporte to kill them.

• Flea beetles come out in proterozoic spring and cause the all but damage on young seedlings. Then adjudicate waiting a few weeks before planting your seedlings. This volition give the plants more clock time to mature thusly they can withstand the hurt better. Plus, the flea mallet population may non be arsenic high once you plant life everything.

Glazed brunette flea beetling on plant leaf

Flea Beetling FAQs

Beneath I will answer the most frequently asked questions about flea beetles. If you still have a question after reading through this article and the FAQs, ask it in the comments section below. I'll answer IT as soon as I can.

Where do flea beetles come from?

Flea beetles hole up during the winter in industrial plant junk or the soil, and go forth in early springtime.

When do flea beetles make out out?

Flea beetles number out of hibernation before long after the ground thaws, and temperatures start warming up in early leap out.

Doctor of Osteopathy flea beetles bite?

No, flea beetles do non bite. They lonesome feed on plants.

Do flea beetles live in mulch?

Flea beetles can winter in the mulch and leaf debris, but they don't subsist in the mulch. Their larvae lives in the soil.

What eats flea beetles?

There are several beneficial flea beetle predators that will eat the adults surgery their larvae, including ladybugs, predatory wasps, and beneficial nematodes.

Are flea beetles degrading?

Yes, flea beetles are harmful to small plants and seedlings. But they are not harmful to humans or pets.

Does mulch attract flea beetles?

No. In any cases, mulch can actually help with controlling flea beetles aside protecting the soil. But mulch doesn't always help for acquiring obviate flea beetles.

Are fleas and flea beetles the synoptic?

No. Don't let the discover confuse you. Flea beetles are not still blood-related to fleas.

Dominant flea beetles in your garden can be frustrating. But with so many effective organic control options to prefer from, there's nobelium reason to fall back to using chemical pesticides. Just comprise reliable to be persistent with your treatments, because you can't remove flea beetles the eldest time you try.

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Share your experiences or tips for controlling flea beetles in the comments section below.

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