First off, plant varieties that are resistant to it in the first place.

Okay. I was going to go with Turbo this year. I had that once from a nursery and it was fabulously productive with no pests. Don't know if it is considered resistant or not, but I remember it fondly, so I have seeds ready to go. Last year I planted Diva I think, and it succumbed to the beetles, but I had never had cuke beetles before in my garden no matter what I planted, so resistant varieties was not an issue in my mind. They just appeared in droves last season. So I was thinking they have finally found my garden and I have just been lucky up until now. But maybe you are saying stuff like Diva is susceptible whereas Turbo is resistant, and I invited beetles by planting a non-resistant type? Is that how it goes? Perhaps I view this from the wrong angle.

Turbo is resistant to cuke beetles? Wasn't aware of that. The only cuke variety I know of resistant to cuke beetles is County Fair and it isn't that the plants ward off the beetles, it is that the plants are resistant to bacterial wilt which the little scum bags transmit.

In theory cuke beetles are attracted to curcurbitacin which all curcurbits (cukes, melons, squash, pumpkins) produce in varying degrees.

The 'non bitter' cukes produce less curcurbitacin (the curcurbitacin is responsible for what some folks perceive as bitterness) than others and are therefore (in theory) less likely to attract the little jerks.

This says nothing about the plant's resistance to disease such as bacterial wilt once they do find the plants.

Diva is low in curcurbitacin, but as you discovered, it isn't resistant to the diseases they spread.

What I am trying this year (cuke beetles are on everything around here) is planting Big Max pumpkin for fun (huge pumpkins) because it is powerfully attractive to cuke beetles. I am going to nuke it with Sevin. I won't be eating the things and I won't spray the flowers which attract good bugs.

The moral is plant a trap cop that is known to be a favorite of the stupid bugs and nuke it with toxins. Don't bother eating from it. The idea is to kill all the buggers on the trap cop. Read this (scroll down to find the ranking of what the beetles prefer) to find a suitable trap cop for yourself.

I'm going to use a trap crop of crookneck squash this year myself, about 12 feet away from my melons. (We don't eat a lot of squash, so if the beetles ruin most of it, we don't care.) Also a stand of ornamental millet next to the squash to attract stinkbugs and cucumber beetles.

Justaguy, since Adios, the bait/poison trap mentioned in the article you linked, is no longer on the market, I did some experimenting last year with the same bait/poison principle as Adios. Several other people also worked on devising attractant/poison bait traps, and the results are given in the thread below.

My solution worked very well for me, and that's tayuya powder mixed with Sevin to make a slightly-soupy paste and placed in cups on the melon trellis. The cucumber beetles are wildly attracted to the tayuya root and the Sevin kills them when they eat the mixture.

In this practical experiment, several people used clove oil mixed with Sevin and reported that it works well as an attractant/killer, too, without harm to other insects. (Female cucumber beetles are attracted to clove oil, not males.)

Anyway, cucumber beetles are such a threat to cucurbits and I was so nearly overrun with them last year that I'm quite willing to develop a whole arsenal of weapons against them -- the more organic, the better.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cucumber Beetle Trap Experiment

Anney,

Did you get the tayuya powder online? A very quick google shows a few places that sell it by the pound, but I am thinking that's much more than I would need. Do you have any sources you can recommend, particularly for a smaller quantity?

justaguy

I did get it online at about $20.00 for a pound, which should last me 2-3 years. If you'd like, I can send you a couple of ounces to make a test run to see if it works for you when they appear. Let me know here and I'll post my email address. You might also want to try the clove oil and see if that works. You can get it in much smaller amounts.

Another excellent attractant is the buffalo gourd plant that grows in the midwest and is an invasive unwanted plant there in most places. The link at the end describes its attraction.

I even found that this site sells buffalo gourd seeds for $2.00.

But it may be too late for a crop this year since they take 100 days to mature. They also do best where it's hot and dry. I live near Atlanta, so we've got the hot part but I'm not sure about dry! Still, I may try to grow it next year and see if the ground-up leaves and stems would attract the beetles.

Nothing's worse than those buggers!

Here is a link that might be useful: Enticing agricultural pests to their last repast

Thanks Anney,

I think I will just buy a pound and see how it goes. I like the idea of a bait/poison better than the nuke a trap cop idea which would have some collateral damage I prefer to avoid.

Great thread! I also just bought a pound of that tayuya root powder. I was also put out of business last year by the cuke beetles and am on the warpath this year.

For the traps I was thinking along the lines of some old small plastic containers, with holes punched by the bottom. By keeping the lid on the container I can keep the rain out, but still let the bugs in.

Scott

Scott

Make sure the holes are large enough at the bottom of the cup to allow the odor to flow outward. Last year one gardener was disappointed because she used ground-up cloves (instead of clove oil) and Sevin in cups with lids and side-holes, and she said it didn't work at all. Maybe it was the ground-up cloves that didn't work. But it might have been that the holes didn't allow much of the odor to waft out, too.

I suppose that any opening large enough to allow enough air movement so the beetles sense the attractant is going to let the weather in as well. A feeder on the order of a hummingbird feeder with large holes at the bottom would probably be ideal, but of course nothing red that would attract those little birdies!

More simply, I found that no lids, but a cup with an open top holding about a tablespoon of the tayuya powder and just enough insecticide-strength Seven to make a soup did just fine. If it rains and dilutes the mixture, just replace it with a new mixture when you know it's stopped raining for a while. The purpose is to make SURE the beetles know the stuff is there for the taking! As you know, they can work fast to chew up your cucurbit plants, so the sooner they're dead, the better.

One of the links above mentions that you can use the safe for humans #28 Red Dye instead of Sevin as the insecticide. It works quite differently than Sevin but is fatal for the beetles, too. Apparently in the beetles' bodies, it's photo-reactive in the sun and destroys the beetles' tissues from within. But I sure don't know where to get #28 Red Dye!

Anney, according to Google those red tablets that we used to be given by the dentist to detect if we brushed well contain red dye #28. They are called "disclosing tablets". They are cheap so maybe just crushing one of them would work. It sure would be nice to have a completely non-toxic solution.

Scott

The red dye is Phloxine B. I have no idea how concentrated a lethal dose would be.

10 grams of the pure stuff is $56 plus shipping.

I think I will be sticking with Sevin at those prices.

Here's another price for it, a little cheaper. Didn't check the shipping.

I'm sure it must be diluted to use -- I assume the dye is a powder. Those articles discussing replacing Sevin with this red dye don't mention an overwhelming cost of the dye, and in the tests, after it's mixed with the attractant, it's sprayed on acres and acres of farmland. No WAY is it used full strength at a similar cost!

Still, I'll stay with Sevin, too, since I already have it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Phloxine B for $33/10 grams

The pills are pennies apiece, thats why I mentioned them and not these expensive concentrates (the chemical must be an incredibly strong colorant). I don't know what else is in the pills so it could be something the beetles don't like, but its worth a try. I think pharmacies sell them for a couple bucks, ask for disclosing tablets.

Scott

Why not use floating row covers? I just diapered four 6' Ã 6' trellises using Agribon AG-15 covers and clothespins for about $20.

nygardener - to answer your question about row cover, it really depends what you're covering. I do have row cover over my bush squashes, and I plan on hand-pollinating them as the cover will also keep out the desirable pollinating insects. I CANNOT do that with cucumbers with all those tiny flowers - and they are the primary target of the cuke beetles in my garden, at least. I did make some nice beetle traps, though, and they are hanging right over the cucumber planting area suspended from the ladder trellis which my plants will soon climb. I found this idea online somewhere but cannot remember the source.

First I bought a stack of bright yellow plastic disposable drinking cups, and some bright yellow felt, and some twine. Then I ordered online some clove oil and a tub of adhesive called Tanglefoot that is used to keep insects from climbing tree trunks. Both are organic. I snipped the felt into small squares maybe 2" by 2" and scented them with a drop of clove oil, then threaded a long piece of twine, knotted on one end through a small hole in the center of the felt square, and then through another small hole in the inside of the cup base so that the knot in the end of the twine holds the felt in the cup base. Finally I used a small cheap paintbrush to daub the adhesive round the inside walls of the cup. I have these cups dangling from the cucumber trellis, and since they are upside down they keep rain out. I am hoping for good results, and I can inexpensively make many more traps as they "fill up".

I too have had it with these stupid blankity blank beetles and their wilts.
This year I'm using the AG15 row cover and I'm not taking the covers off from transplant thru harvest.

I'm growing nothing but parthenocarpic cukes including slicers and picklers, (no pollination necessary), all from Johnnys Seeds.
If I don't need to remove the covers because I don't need to pollinate (or the insects don't), then I have found the best no chemical/trap method for me.

I'll let you know how it works.
Rebecca

Thanks for the explanation, raisemybeds, and for the trap idea. My transplants are already starting to flower. I don't mind letting them grow rather than fruit for a couple of weeks but then I'll have to come up with something! Do you have a good reference on how to hand-pollinate? (I have winter squashes, cukes, and melons, more or less separated.) Is there a safe time to leave the covers off, when the beetles, squash bugs, etc. are gone?

Rebecca, a caveat about row covers: I have read that some of the nasty bugs overwinter near their "favorite food" and can re-emerge under the covers. Can you plant your cukes in a different bed from the one you used last year? If not, a thorough tilling would kill most of them  maybe after a few dry days, so the earthworms have retreated farther underground.