Pests and diseases of potatoes - how to deal with them
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The main diseases and pests of potatoes - what to do if the potato is sick. Control measures.
During the period of growth and development of potato plants, the main thing is to protect them from the most dangerous diseases (late blight, alternariosis) and pests (Colorado potato beetle, potato bug).
Fitoftoroz begins to appear, as a rule, on the lower leaves of potatoes in the form of vague weeping spots, first along the periphery, and then on the entire surface of the leaves. A distinctive sign of the disease is a white coating on the border of healthy and diseased tissue. The plaque is especially noticeable in wet and cloudy weather in the morning or during the day at a temperature of 13-21 degrees. Similar spots sometimes form on the upper leaves. Browning of the upper part of the stems and peduncles is also observed.
In the future, the disease spreads to the entire plant: it fades, blackens and withers. With a strong development of the disease, there is a massive infection of the tubers, both during the growing season and during harvesting.
When plants are affected ALTERNARIOSIS Dry leaflets of different size appear between the veins of the leaves. The tissue of the sheet between the spots turns yellow, the leaves wither. On the stems of potatoes dry oblong grayish-brown necroses are formed, which sometimes cover the perimeter of the stem, and it breaks and dies.
Late blight develops mainly with high humidity (especially in fogs, dews and drizzling rains), alternariosis - in hot and dry weather.
All the infamous COLORADIAN BEETLE AND ITS BREEDS eat leaves, their petioles and young part. Beetles from above: convex, from below flat, shining, reddish-yellow with black longitudinal stripes.
Larvae are worm-shaped, gray or dark brown, red, red-yellow and orange-yellow, with a length of 2 to 15 mm, depending on age.
A lot has been written about the Colorado potato beetle, but all the tips quickly become obsolete - the beetle adapts perfectly to any poisons except the most toxic ones and it’s scary to spray potatoes.
Especially dangerous colorado beetle growing 2 potato yields per year in one plot. In case of untimely spraying, the second crop will not be received because during the season it multiplies and in the absence of wintering its population does not decrease.
Potato bug (larvae and beetles) it damages the leaves, leaving only veins. Leaf, as a rule, dies.
The beetles are hemispherical, from the top of the orange-golden to the red-brown color with a velvety hue due to the covering hairs, from below the brown-red. The larvae are oval, from 1,5 to 6 mm, from above convex, from below flat, light yellow, but from the back, because of the dark scutes with branched black thorns, they appear gray-black.
With the emergence of seedlings in mass, overwintered beetles intensively populate potato plantings, and during budding and flowering of plants, larvae attack the tops. The Colorado potato beetle and the potato bug feel especially good in hot weather (20-25 degrees). Their appetite sharply increases at this time.
It is clear that late blight, alternaria, colorado beetle and potato cow eat a portion of the crop, which gardeners and truck farmers count.
In order to reduce the damage caused by these diseases and pests, it is necessary to strictly carry out all preventive measures to protect potatoes from harmful organisms, as well as spray plants with plant, biological and, in extreme cases, chemical preparations.
Against late blight (even in the absence of disease), plants begin to process when the tops of potatoes will close. We offer three treatment schemes.
Plans for controlling the late blight of potatoes
- Four-five-fold spraying with daily infusion of wormwood (1 part fresh plants and 3 parts water) or a decoction (it is prepared 15 minutes) of ordinary dreams (1: 4). In each case, laundry soap is added to the working fluid (40 g per 10 liters of water). The interval between preventive treatments is 10-12 days, after the onset of the disease - 5 days. The last time the potatoes are sprayed is 5 to XNUMX days before harvesting or mowing the tops.
- The first treatment of plants is carried out with one of the systemic-contact preparations (per 10 l of water): arceride (50 g), oxychome (20 g) or MC ridomil (25 g); the second - after 10-12 days with contact-action preparations (per 10 l of water): D-M-45 (20 g), cuprosate (25-50 g), medex (100-150 g), copper chloroxide (40 g) or Bordeaux liquid. For subsequent spraying of plants, these same contact preparations are used with an interval of 7-8 days. Processing is stopped 20 days before harvesting or 7-8 days before the tops are cut.
- The first and second sprayings are carried out with chemical preparations (see Scheme 2), the subsequent ones are carried out with herbal preparations (see Scheme 1) with an interval of 5 days. The last time the plants are sprayed 5-6 days before harvesting or mowing tops.
Against alternaria, only chemical contact preparations are effective, and the treatments are carried out at the same interval as for late blight. To begin treatment it is necessary at occurrence of the first signs of illness. With simultaneous damage to plants, blight and alternaria use only chemical treatment (according to the second scheme).
To increase the resistance of plants to both diseases at the beginning of budding, it is advisable to treat the plants with the following biologically active substances (per 10 l of water): harmony (40 ml), sodium hydrogen humate (10-15 ml), immunocytophyte (3 mg).
As soon as the shoots appear, we must begin to fight pests. From this moment until the lateral shoots grow back, it is advisable to carry out two or three manual gatherings of overwintered beetles and oviposites (on the underside of the leaf are dense clutches of yellowish-orange eggs of the Colorado potato beetle or loose clutches of yellow potato lady eggs) with an interval of 4-5 days. This does not take much time, since the plants are low and well visible. In small areas, we recommend systematically collecting pests manually and after the growth of the tops. Usually, bugs and larvae are shaken off in a bucket or in a special tray. The collected beetles are heated in strong saline or boiling water.
In large areas where, after the growth of the tops, manual collection of pests becomes too time-consuming and ineffective, biological and chemical preparations are used. Processing begins during the period of mass emergence of larvae of the first or second ages, when they reach a length of 1,5-2,5 mm. These larvae are most sensitive to poisons, therefore the treatments are very effective. 5-7 days after spraying, and sometimes the next day (if it rains on the day), potato plants need to be examined and the advisability of re-treatment should be established.
Preparation of solutions for combating the Colorado potato beetle
The following biological preparations (per 10 l of water) can be used against the Colorado potato beetle for spraying tops: bitoxibacillin (40-100 g), Colorado (90 ml); chemicals (per 10 l of water): bancol (2-3 g), decis (2 ml), intavir (1 tablet), karate (2 ml), rovikurt (10 ml), sumyalfa (5 ml), fastak (2 ml), aime (1,5 ml) and others authorized for retail sale to the public.
High protective and ecological effect is achieved when using half of the doses of biologics with 1 / 4 for the treatment of the mixture, doses of bancol, karate, sumialph, fastak or eima.
Processing potatoes with biological preparations should be completed in 5 — b days, and chemical ones, as a rule, 20 days before harvesting.
For the protection of plants from the Colorado beetle, many gardeners dust the bushes with wood ash, and also sprinkle with infusions or decoctions of leaves, fruits and shells of walnut, plants of bitter wormwood and its mixture with ash, tobacco, elecampane roots, dandelion and horsetail, onion husks, etc. .
Potato can only be controlled with chemicals. To do this, use the following insecticides (per 10 l of water): arrivo (1,5 ml), zeta (1 tablet or 8 g), intavir (1 tablet), nurell (2 ml), cymbush (25% - 1,5, 10 ml, 3% - XNUMX ml).
The flow rate of the working fluid for all types of spraying is up to 10 liters per hundredth. To achieve uniform coating of the entire surface of the leaves with small drops, which means to ensure high processing efficiency, spraying can be carried out quickly using backpack, hand and other types of sprayers.
Safety in processing potatoes from diseases and pests
Before starting work, the sprayer must be thoroughly cleaned and rinsed, the pump lubricated and tested. Before pouring into the sprayer, the working fluid is thoroughly stirred and, if necessary, filtered through special filters or two or three layers of gauze. The treatment is carried out in the morning or evening hours, in windless weather and if precipitation is not expected in the near future. Moving during spraying is better in the aisles, treating two or three rows simultaneously. To prevent drugs from falling on vegetable and berry crops, they are covered with a film or other material while processing the potatoes.
When handling chemicals, use caution. Use a respirator or gauze dressing goggles, goggles, rubber gloves. After processing the plants, you need to wash your face and hands with soap and rinse your mouth.
Take good care of healthy seed material in the next year. To do this, during the period of full flowering of potatoes, mark the most healthy, well-developed plants typical for the cultivar you cultivate, then you can get a steady seed material from them, including sprouting.
Also material on the topic: How to get seed potatoes seedlings
10-12 days before harvesting, dig these bushes and select healthy tubers for their subsequent storage.
Do not forget that the seed potatoes are stored separately from food.
Potato diseases - a list from a specialist
Do you remember potato diseases after a visit to the cellar ... However, not so much depends on us. Do not grow potatoes for decades in one place, take care not only of the plantings, but also of the soil itself (regularly season with compost or humus). Select varieties and prepare spring planting material.
The tops and roots are sick of potatoes. The most vivid and disappointing unhealthy of potatoes is manifested on tubers in the form of rot: dry and most nasty - wet. At the first symptoms of the disease, you can even process the tops (if you notice!). Scab is an unpleasant thing, but not so harmful. On the tops is invisible. Let's look at other diseases.
Phytophthora
The causative agent either gets from the soil to the lower leaves and then marches along the shoot, or from the infected tuber moves along the vascular system.
At the beginning of the disease, it is seen in the form of specks on the leaves, oblong wide strokes of brown color first in the lower parts of the stems. One should only be attentive, and taking timely measures, we will save the harvest.
Virus
This enemy also manifests itself on the tops (and only on the tops). Leaves become not a characteristic form, their shade changes. Pestriny can appear. The sick bush looks more subtle, the tubers tie up small ones.
Here, the only control measure is the destruction of infected bushes. The disease is transferred from plant to plant by insects (like plague fleas) - we destroy them!
Fuzarioz
But the rot itself as such is harmed mainly during storage, it is not painful to determine on the tops.
Unless Fusarium: a variant of its hurricane development is possible - just yesterday they admired flowering potatoes, and today the tops of the leaves lie on the ground black, like lightning struck the field! This is not a rare attack for our warm regions, but if you regularly look closely at the plantings, the beginning can be traced: the upper leaves brighten, and a noticeable lilac shade appears along their edges.
Usually, the disease is focal: the infected bushes are best removed, and the entire planting treated with good old phytosporin.
In the cellar, the bopesis manifests itself in the form of depressed spots, the flesh under which turns into blackish trash, which in sharp tongues goes deep into the tuber. Periodically, we sorted out. We remove diseased tubers.
Fomoznaya rot
The tubers affected by it look about the same as those with Fusarium. Only the affected flesh is separated from the healthy part by a strip of olive shade. It spreads in the field, with rain, wind. The tops do not show up in any way.
Ring rot
It happens that you cut already peeled potatoes - and inside, closer to the "core" - a ring of nasty whitish-olive mucus! Ring rot. In all respects, a secret disease ... And it shows itself poorly in the tops: moreover, in the second half of summer, by withering of shoots of a bush. It’s only uneven: it’s one thing when the whole bush withers naturally, but when 1-3 shoots wither and lie down in it, there is something to think about.
A disease of a bacterial nature, from control measures - almost exclusively prevention. And to prevent injury to tubers during harvesting.
Alternaria
Another common ailment. It manifests itself on tubers and on the tops.
On the tubers, slightly depressed spots are formed with a relief, as on a classic bog - concentric ridges appear. And under the spot - a cone of dry rot, leaving in the flesh.
On the tops of the week, two weeks before flowering, brown spots appear, often with zonation, like on leaves of geraniums, which slowly grow.
Unlike phytophthora, the entire bush does not turn brown, but it becomes like a leopard by cleaning! Do not bring to this: alternaria is a mushroom, and therefore we fight with it fungicides. Modern, broad-spectrum action - quite effective!
And at the very beginning of the disease or for prevention, bacterial preparations such as integral or bactophyte will work well.
© Author: Alexander Efimovich Stukalov, agronomist, Nizh. Novgorod
Below other entries on the topic "Dacha and garden - with their own hands"
- Treatment of currants, gooseberries, yoshta with boiling water in winter against pests
- Potato Alternariosis (dry spotting) - control measures
- Pyrei in the garden - how to get rid of? List of effective ways
- Processing black currants from pests - all without chemicals!
- Ring rot of potatoes (photo) symptoms and how to treat
- Carrot pests and control
- Bacterial grape cancer (photo) - prevention and control
- How to get rid of slugs - folk remedies
- Combating leaf-eating pests on flowers
- Diseases of gladioli: name, symptoms and treatment - memo table
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How I got rid of white mold on potatoes
Potatoes, where the fungus appeared, chose, washed, dried and let go immediately into the consumption. The places on the wall and the shelf, which fungus took a fancy, wiped with a dry rag, and then bleached with a solution of lime. I cooked it for ordinary whitewash. This was in February last year, and in May I took out everything from the cellar.
The shelves were washed and left in the courtyard in the sun, the preserves and pickles carried to the funerary, wiping first with a wet, and then with a dry towel. Vegetables, and there were few of them, also carried out of the cellar. A solution of lime whitewashed the ceiling, walls, floor (he had concrete) and left the room for the whole summer open. During whitewashing, particular attention was paid to corners and crevices. In the middle of August, she brought everything she needed to the cellar, preserving tare and pickles again with a towel. The fungus did not appear any more.
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In autumn 2010 bought on the market 400 kg of potatoes with white tubers, very tasty. Having examined them well, they noticed numerous sores from the defeat of the tubers by a potato moth. The time is right for preparing the tubers and planting the potatoes. Can you plant such tubers, or is there a danger of bringing this malicious pest to your garden?
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Now you will not be surprised with the potato moths of truck farmers. This terrible pest gradually successfully mastered our kitchen gardens.
What needs to be done in your situation? Selectively take dozens of the most affected tubers and cut them into several slices before using them for food and carefully examine the tracks of the caterpillars: whether the pupae can also be preserved in the moves. If there is both, the thing is bad. To plant such tubers is undesirable.
But if there is no opportunity to purchase a new planting material, do so.
Sort the tubers, choosing the least damaged ones for planting. Before planting tubers, it is better not to germinate. But to wake them up, put them on warming or light germination so that the sprouts are no more than 2-3 cm long. And immediately before planting, treat them with one of the preparations: Matador. Matador Grand, Matador Super. Nuprid, Tirana, Masterpiece. Potatoes need to be planted deeper - up to 15-17 cm, so that the small moth larvae do not reach the tubers and infect them. Potatoes for this also need to be spud. In addition, during the processing of potatoes against the Colorado potato beetle, butterflies and caterpillars of potato moths are destroyed.
In July-August, when the potato tops are still green, it is necessary to continue treatment with the same drugs. With the yellowing and drying of the tops, the potatoes must be cleaned immediately, and after drying for several hours immediately lowered into the basement for storage. In no case should you leave potatoes in barns or under canopies, otherwise it is possible to infect it with flying moth butterflies.
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Why are brown spots often found in the pulp of raw potatoes? I grow my potatoes, it is well kept all winter, and the spots do not disappear. Before cooking, I try to cut them, but it turns out a big waste. What's with the potatoes and is it not harmful to eat?
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Potato has a glandular patchiness. This non-infectious disease affects tubers grown on acidic soils that contain excess iron and aluminum and very little phosphorus. "Rust" the tubers begin in 25-45 days after harvesting. Rusty spots are located not immediately under the skin, but around the vascular ring and go into the depths of the tuber. Disease of tubers is not affected.
Rusty flesh when cleaning tubers can not be cut, since when cooking it disappears. You can eat such potatoes, but its nutritional value and taste are lower than those grown on fertile soil.
Check the soil from the site for acidity and nutrient content. Such a survey can be carried out by specialists of the local agrochemical service.
If this option does not suit you, then annually make an autumn digging 1,2-1,5 kg lime (dolomite flour, chalk, wood ash) for every 10 sq.m garden. In addition, it is advisable at least once every two years to make 40-60 kg of organic fertilizers in combination with mineral fertilizers, taking into account the balance of the necessary elements.
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Those who grow potatoes and, therefore, not by hearsay are familiar with the Colorado beetle, lilium murmur is not a wonder.
This red-winged relative of a potato-eater appeared recently with us, but has already managed to get comfortable ... on lilies! If you do not pay attention to the pink larvae on these beautiful plants in time, do not dream of flowers. The beetle is able to eat the plant to a bare stem.
The first signs of the appearance of a corm are rounded recesses on the leaves. The insect lays eggs inside the bud that has begun, so the larvae, having barely been born, begin to actively eat and destroy the ovary. Adults
it is possible not only to see, but also to hear, they emit characteristic sounds, for which they are nicknamed "murmurs," or "ratchets".
My methods of combating red-winged gluttons are primitive, but effective. As soon as the lilies went into growth, I arm myself with a tin can, put on my glasses and go to inspect the flower garden. Each leaf must be examined from above and below. I collect the larvae by hand and destroy it.
However, it happens that you can see a few larvae. Then you have to use chemicals. Any preparations are good against Colorado beetle.
Anna SMIRNOVA, Krasnodar
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Where do the ladybirds winter?
We jokingly say that a dozen ladybirds are replacing a bucket of "chemistry". And this is quite fair, because the best "terminator" for aphids is hard to come up with. I want to advise the gardeners how to "privatize" these wonderful insects.
Around the fruit trees, retreating 15-10 cm from the trunk, plant spicy-aromatic plants. It can be dill, parsley, coriander or celery. They are attracted by the scent of ladybirds. Moreover, those so like these plants, that they are happy to stay on them for the winter.
From the point of view of gardening, spicy plants under trees of special value do not represent. But they reliably protect both the trees under which are located, and the whole garden-garden as a whole. Just do not take them out for the winter, leave in the form in which they survived until the fall. Next year, you will see that there are a lot more ladybirds on the site.