How to get rid of wireworms in a potato plot

Content

1 Wireworm in potatoes
2 How to deal with wireworm on potatoes
3 Results

Potatoes are an unpretentious vegetable crop that is easy to grow and does not require specific knowledge. Unfortunately, the whole idyll is disturbed by pests - insects that eat potatoes and spoil their tubers and greens. The fight against wireworms among gardeners comes in second place after the “battles” with the Colorado potato beetle. And, if the Colorado potato beetle shows itself well externally - its adults, larvae and eggs are on the surface and dot the green part of the bush, then the wireworm lurks underground and does not betray its presence in any way. You can find out that potato tubers are affected only after digging up the potatoes - and this is already too late.

How to protect your garden from secret pestHow to rid a potato plot of wireworms in such a way as to cause minimal damage to plantings and soil - there will be an article about this.

Wireworm in potatoes

The notorious potato pest is the larva of the click beetle. The larva looks like a small worm, up to three centimeters long, and is colored yellow, orange or brown.

Attention! A characteristic feature of the wireworm is its very hard shell, which is difficult to crush even with the help of a hard object.

The adult of the pest is a black beetle with an elongated body, the length of which can reach five centimeters. The nutcracker got its name due to the characteristic sound it makes when trying to roll over from its back to its belly.

The life cycle of click beetles is 3-5 years. Adults overwinter in the ground, where they escape frost. With the first warm weather (usually in April), the beetles crawl to the surface, and their females begin to lay eggs - white oval granules with a diameter of about 1.5 mm.

In one season, a female can lay up to a hundred eggs - click beetles are quite prolific. After some time, small larvae appear from the eggs - in the first year of life, such wireworms do not harm either potatoes or other cultivated crops. And already from the second year of life, the larva actively spoils potatoes, roots and tubers of other garden crops, cereals and perennial herbs.

To develop the correct tactics for getting rid of wireworms in potatoes, you need to know the characteristics and “habits” of this pest:

Adults and larvae of click beetles love high humidity and shade. That is why wireworms rush to the potato field - they lack moisture, the lack of which they make up for along with the potato pulp.
The beetle, as well as its larva, overwinters at a depth of 15-20 cm. If individuals or their eggs appear above the surface of the earth in the autumn-winter period, they will die.
Nutcracker eggs need shade and moisture; the sun is destructive for them.
For several years in a row, wireworms can eat only one type of food; the larvae do not get used to new food well - during this period, up to 90% of individuals die.
The favorite and natural food of larvae is the roots of young shoots weedy grass - creeping wheatgrass.
Dense thickets and soil entangled with plant roots are attractive to wireworms.
The pest loves acidic soils.

Knowing these characteristics of the pest, you can easily draw up a plan to combat it. But it should be remembered that comprehensive measures to combat wireworms are most effective.

Potatoes damaged by wireworms are dotted with multiple passages of complex shapes (shown in the photo below). Such potatoes are very difficult to peel and cut, removing damaged areas, so most often they are simply thrown away.

All this has a bad effect on the presentation and quality of potatoes. Besides a passage gnawed by a wireworm in the potato pulp is an “open wound” through which infections, fungal spores or rot can easily penetrate. Affected tubers often disappear soon after exposure to the pest.

Important! Potato yields in a field infected with wireworm can be reduced by 50-60%.

And the worst thing is that next year the larvae will continue their “activities” and will harm the new potato crop.

How to deal with wireworm on potatoes

For many years, gardeners and farmers have been fighting this pest, so today the most effective wireworm remedies. Gardeners protect their fields in different ways, but All events can be divided into four groups:

Agrotechnical ways to save the crop.
Chemical methods for controlling larvae on potatoes.
Luring out larvae using baits and traps.
Folk (or safe) remedies.

How to remove wireworms and which method is best to use must be decided depending on the complexity of the infection, as well as taking into account the area of the area planted with potatoes.

Agrotechnical measures

Some agrotechnical techniques developed taking into account the characteristics and lifestyle of this pest will help to destroy most of the larvae and adults on potatoes.

So, The following will help remove annoying wireworms from a potato field:

Late autumn plowing land on a plot with potatoes. This should be done no earlier than the end of October, when the first frosts have already begun and serious frosts are already coming. The soil is dug up or plowed to a depth of at least 25 cm, trying to turn over each layer of soil. This way you can kill most of the adults and larvae that have descended deep into the soil for the winter - they will simply freeze.
In the spring, the garden or field is dug up again, now you don’t have to go so deep, since the target is the click beetle eggs, located 50-10 cm from the surface. The appropriate period for such an event is May, when the sun will be quite hot. The eggs and larvae will die. Along the way, you can remove the roots of wheatgrass and other weeds - adult wireworms can accumulate there. It is better to burn the grass.
As a rule, moist soils are highly acidic, and this is a suitable environment for wireworms. It is easy to find out about the acidity of the soil in a potato plot; you need to examine the weeds growing there. Horse sorrel, plantain, mint and horsetail grow where it is damp and the soil is acidic. By reducing acidity, you can make a potato field unattractive to wireworms. This can be done in several ways, the traditional way is to add fluff lime to the soil. It should be remembered that this method can also harm potatoes, causing scab on tubers. More gentle methods: dolomite flour, chalk, wood ash, crushed egg shells.
You need to clean the area with potatoes regularly and very carefully.. In the spring, all last year's grass, tops and greenery must be collected and burned, because female click beetles most often lay their eggs under dry grass. Throughout the season, you need to pull out the weeds, trying to pull the entire root out of the ground. You cannot leave pulled out or weeded weeds next to the potatoes - they should be taken away from the garden and, better yet, burned.
It has been noticed that constantly growing potatoes in one place not only depletes the soil, but also leads to a multiple increase in wireworm individuals. The wireworm cannot switch to new food in one year, so compliance with crop rotation in potato plantings is especially important. The best way to do this is to divide the plot into 3-4 zones and every year sow one of the parts with another crop, and the rest of the area with potatoes. Alternately, such areas change places - potatoes grow in place of green manure, and so on. You can use both green manure, such as vetch, mustard, rapeseed, and crop-bearing crops (legumes, corn, buckwheat). Crop rotation helps to improve the soil, saturate it with biological nitrogen, and increase potato yields. And also, in a few seasons you can completely cope with the wireworm.
During dry periods, wireworms eat potatoes even more intensively, as they need moisture. If you water your potatoes more often, you can reduce the number of damaged tubers.
If weeds grow on the border with the garden, you need to separate them with several rows of lettuce. Weed wireworms will go to the potatoes, but will meet juicier lettuce roots on the way and will remain there until the end of the season.

Advice! For greater efficiency, it is better to deoxidize the soil under potatoes with ash from burnt sunflower stems and potato tops - this will be especially unpleasant for wireworms.

Fighting with chemicals

The most aggressive measures to combat wireworms on potatoes are insecticidal preparations and the use of mineral additives. In comparison, a more gentle way is to fertilize potatoes with nitrogen and ammonia; you can use:

ammonium sulfate;
ammonium chloride;
ammonium nitrate.

Important! Preparations containing ammonia must be embedded in the ground, because wireworms cannot tolerate the pungent smell of ammonia, and on the surface it quickly evaporates.

Insecticides are used both to treat potato tubers before planting and at all stages of crop development. The most effective drugs for wireworms are:

“Aktara” is used when sowing potatoes, it is one hundred percent effective - the wireworm does not touch the treated potato bushes.
“Prestige” also refers to insecticides applied to potato tubers before planting.
"Bazudin" is recommended to be used only when other anti-wireworm agents are ineffective. The drug is a real poison not only for wireworms, but also for humans and mammals. Therefore, you can only process potatoes that have not yet set tubers.

If possible, it is better to postpone treating potatoes with insecticides and try to deal with wireworms using biological means. The essence of the action of such drugs is based on the fact that in nature every living creature has an enemy. For the wireworm, such a natural enemy is A predatory nematode is a microscopic worm that penetrates the wireworm’s body and eats it from the inside.

Attention! For earthworms, animals, birds, as well as for humans, this particular nematode is absolutely harmless.

The biological agent must be applied to the soil in which potatoes grow. It is best to do this locally - in each hole before planting the tubers. Biological products are sold in the form of a suspension (“Nemabact”) or as part of a special primer (“Protection”).

Traps and bait

Compared to other means of combating wireworms on potatoes, such methods are the least effective, but they are safe and do not require financial investments. In a small area with potatoes, traps can indeed cope with wireworms, destroying up to 80% of individuals.

You can lure the wireworm, taking into account its “culinary” preferences and craving for warm, damp places:

After harvesting potatoes, they leave piles of tops, straw or manure, and on a frosty day they turn them over - the wireworms that have accumulated in a warm place die.
In spring, such traps can be buried or covered with film. After a couple of days, dig up along with the wireworms and burn.
In May or early June, cereal crops or corn are sown between potato rows, throwing a handful of seeds into the hole. In a couple of weeks, the cereals will germinate, their tender roots will attract wireworms - the pest can be removed simply by digging up the bait plants.
Pieces of potatoes, carrots, beets are strung on a stick and dug into the ground. The next day, the bait can be removed and the wireworms removed from it, and then placed back in the ground.

Advice! For greater effectiveness, it is recommended to soak food baits or cereal seeds in insecticides such as Decis.Then the wireworm will die only after tasting the “treat”.

Folk remedies

The attack in the form of wireworms, which destroys potato and other crops, has been known for a long time. During this time, people learned to fight the pest and developed several effective tactics:

During planting, half a liter of pink potassium permanganate is poured into each hole under the potatoes.
Potato tubers are treated with dark purple potassium permanganate before planting - the wireworm will not eat such potatoes.
Water the potatoes with an infusion of field herbs such as nettle, dandelion, celandine, coltsfoot.
A handful of onion peels are placed in each hole with potatoes - neither wireworms nor Colorado potato beetles can stand the smell of rotting onions.
In the fall, pine or spruce needles are buried in the potato plot - the wireworm does not like the smell of pine needles.
Marigolds can be planted between rows of potatoes.

Advice! To combat wireworms on potatoes, you can attract poultry. For example, laying hens can eat hard worms, thereby supplementing their diet with nutritious protein.

Results

Each gardener decides for himself how to get rid of wireworms in potatoes. Experienced farmers recommend postponing the use of toxic drugs and trying other, safer methods.

For those who are engaged in growing natural products, only the biological method and the installation of baits and traps are available, because such gardeners do not even use mineral fertilizers for their potatoes.

In any case, you should not forget about agrotechnical techniques, because their effectiveness has been proven by years of practice and clean harvests of beautiful potatoes, without moves or damage.