
One morning, your potato plants look lush and full. Dreams of hash browns, soup, and loaded baked potatoes fill your thoughts. The following day, your plants look as if they’ve been attacked. On half-eaten leaves and skeleton-like stems are ugly orange larvae—all over your plants. To save your potato harvest, you need to take action fast. Here’s how to get rid of Colorado potato beetles!
What Are Colorado Potato Beetles?
The Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata, goes by several names. People call them potato bugs, ten-lined potato bugs, or those yucky orange things on the potato plants. Despite their name, they don’t affect only gardens in Colorado!
These six-legged insects munch potato leaves with wild abandon. Potato beetles and their larvae can decimate your potato patch in short order. The adults are squat, oval, and humpbacked. They have the same general shape as a ladybug.
An adult potato beetle is easy to identify. The head is orange with black spots, and the back is yellow-orange with black stripes. Ten stripes, but you don’t need to count them. If you find an insect matching the description, covered in lines that run head to tail, it is probably an adult Colorado potato beetle.
Potato beetle larvae are soft-bodied and dull orange, with two rows of black spots down the sides. The larger they get, the more plump and humpbacked they look. Young larvae are tiny and rapidly enlarge as they feed.
Not Just Your Potatoes Are at Risk
Colorado potato beetles, especially their larvae, will also eat other plants in your garden. Anything in the Solanaceae (nightshade) family is fair game, and they will readily munch on your eggplants, tomatoes, and pepper plants. Alternate hosts include wild nightshades and ground cherry.
The Lifecycle of Colorado Potato Beetles
The adults emerge from the soil in spring at about the same time as your new potatoes. They will mate and then lay eggs in groups on the undersides of leaves. You may see these clusters of bright orange eggs clinging to the bottom of a potato leaf. They are easily recognizable. Each adult female can lay over 300 eggs, so they are worth finding and eliminating.
Larvae hatch, begin to eat, and can finish growing in 10 days if the temperatures are warm. Larvae then drop off into the soil and become pupae. Two or more generations can occur during one growing season in some climates.