Saving potatoes from wireworm onion husks
Potato cultivation - salt and onion peel from wireworm
Just like in an Indian movie!
Proper and timely planting, care and top dressing of potatoes - these, of course, are important nuances. But, if you screw up with the timing of the harvest, all the work will go down the drain. However, there is one little trick here. Look here.
Than calm the husks?
Having been reading my beloved magazine for many years, as usual, from cover to cover, so many questions, wishes, thoughts have accumulated that it is time to give up our shyness and finally take up the pen. But there are so many that I don’t know where to start! Well, I'll start, perhaps, with potatoes - after all, this is our second bread.
We bought a long abandoned plot on the river bank, plowed up and in the first year planted three buckets of potatoes, a garden of onion-turnips, 10 roots of tomatoes and three roots of cucumbers. We did not manage anything else. Plants grew so frail that all the desire to engage in vegetable gardens immediately disappeared.
Autumn has come, they began to dig potatoes, and there is no harvest, but only tears: all the tubers are eaten by a wireworm. And besides, they grew small. Apparently, this wireman got hungry on such a "pea" potato and threw himself onto other landings, because from the heart he ate not only cucumbers and tomatoes, but even onions. My husband jokingly said: "And how did the wireman's eyes fail to fall out when he was basting the onion?"
In general, our first garden season ended in complete embarrassment. Someone from our neighbors smirked, looking at our "successes", others pretended that nothing had happened, but there were also kind people who advised us to fill the entire area with onion husks. Well, why not try it? But where to take so much of this good? We decided to go to the vegetable base in the city. At that time there was strict: even the rot had to pass first through the weight, and then just go to the dump.
Well, we agreed there, and two cars with onion husks (when they scattered it, there were rotten bulbs and garlic substandard there) we went straight to our dacha - it was just enough to fill the whole garden with an even layer.
They just finished work, when suddenly a strong wind blew out - the husk rose and spun like rose petals in some Indian film - that’s what it looks to the neighbors will fly away. We rushed to water it: I - from a watering can, my husband - from a hose.
Barely reassured. So then, until the very snow and watered. And in the spring they brought sand and earth to the dump truck (and maybe peat, I do not remember any more), plowed it all with a tractor and then two more times the cultivator passed (at that time we had one of the first ones).
And finally, before planting, I did as my mother advised: along the perimeter of the whole area from the watering can without nozzle, the earth spilled a thick solution of table salt.
When autumn came, the neighbors no longer smirked, but only asked: “Have you entered into an agreement with pests?” “Of course,” we answered, “we agreed, but not with the“ adversaries, ”but with the land.” We had a harvest then, as in a fairy tale. And until now, although many years have passed, we do not suffer from this infection - the wireworm, but from time to time, for prevention, a whole bag of husk, or even two, are cowed every year to the beds, and then we grind it into the ground (with watering no longer bother).
See also: Wireworm - how to deal with this beetle
Potato harvesting: better late
And here's what I want to say separately. All neighbors usually start digging potatoes in early September and only manage to take buckets of rot. And everyone is looking and looking for the reason. And that year my husband was detained at work, he was busy all weekend, he managed to escape to the dacha only at the very end of September, and we began digging 1 October.
The weather was already frosty, little hands freeze, and potatoes - well, just gold! Itself crumbled, it did not need to be torn from the stems, vigorous, dry, it rings already. And the ground was dry, because the tubers were matured enough, scored starch and everything they need for keeping quality. That year, we did not throw out a single rotten potato. None!
Since then, the digging at us begins depending on the weather: September 29 - October 3. Even the neighbors, looking at us, also gradually moved to the late harvest, and now no one complains about the loss.
During the whole period of our truck farming we have tried different grades and as a result we stopped at three. Now we deal only with them. This is Adretta (she in any year, regardless of weather, gives a stable harvest), Rose of the winds (the skin of the tubers is dark pink, and inside they are dark yellow, we like this potato both in yield and taste), and the names I do not know the third grade.
Three years ago I bought it from my grandmother in the market - and at once a whole bucket, painfully she praised him. And she didn’t deceive! This potato is some kind of interesting: in the holes there are no voids, tubers of six or seven pieces, no trifles at all. The taste is just excellent, you lick your fingers. We plant this variety (as, incidentally, the other two) with our eyes.
We place them on the beds without any wisdom, leaving 70 cm between rows. At first I grumbled at my husband that so much land was left empty, and when I read the article where the gardener advises to do just that, I hid the magazine right away so my husband would not see it ...
About others useful properties and application of onion husks you can read here
© Author: Galina I. Ermolaeva
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I understand that this has already been written more than once, but after carefully studying all the letters, I could not find a solution to my problem. And the fact is that my garden was simply attacked by a wireworm. This year his divorce was probably 10 times more than it was before. But when planting potatoes, I always put in the holes handfuls of onion ash husks, several granules of superphosphate, and also a pinch of a special preparation from the wireworm, diluted with sleeping tea.
Moreover, a couple of years ago I began to use green manure sowing. Most of all I liked rye, which I cut off twice during the summer, and in the fall I completely embed it in the soil. Previously, all these funds were enough to somehow keep the wireworm in check: there were holes in the tubers, but they were rare.
And now there are as many as 10 holes in each tuber, and, moreover, deep. Why is the wireworm so active? How can I bring him in line now? I am already ready to use even some extreme methods of dealing with it. For example, in one of the issues of "Dacha" I read the following advice. When planting potatoes, it is necessary to plant not a lot of the same rye around it. And when the siderat grows up and begins to interfere with its neighbor, it is necessary to carefully pull it out along with the roots on which the hated wireworm will sit. And then it remains only to throw all the collected rye on the road. But is it right? Even birds do not peck a wireworm.
In addition, I am already many years old, and such work scares off with its laboriousness. I will add that the rest of the crops in the garden grow well, with the exception of the onion, which constantly turns yellow early, although I peel it of all the husks and trim the heels of it. I soak the bulbs first in salt water, and then in a solution of potassium permanganate. Maybe at the same time you can tell me the recipe for onion treatment, dear readers? I would be very grateful for your help!
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Wireworm trap
The most important thing in August is to protect the potatoes from the wireworm. After all, damaged tubers are stored much worse.
To do this, I cut the old tubers in half and bury them in the soil between the rows of potatoes to a depth of 5-10 cm with a cut down at a distance of 50 cm from each other. I stick twigs nearby. After 1 - 2 days, I examine the baits and destroy the gathered pests.
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3 reliable recipes
A real disaster in the suburban areas is the beetle larva - wireworm. To combat it, I dug bottles with bait in different places of the plot into the ground at an angle of 45 ° with the neck up. Getting into the bottles, the wireworm could no longer get out. Another way is effective. I cut potato tubers, stuck twigs up to 20 cm long in them and dug them to a depth of 10 cm with a slice down at a distance of 2 m from each other. Two days later, he dug out the bait and destroyed the pests. When planting potatoes in each well was added 1 tbsp. l mustard cake. Now we have no wireworm!
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The wireworm does not spare any potatoes, nor carrots, nor beets.
To fight it in the autumn, I dig through the soil so that the larvae get into the upper layers of the earth and die in the frost (they live at a depth of 10-12 cm). In the summer I loosen the soil in the inter-rows, due to which some of the larvae perish. When planting potatoes the tubers are pollinated with ashes, which is also not tolerated by the pest. The wireworm is very fond of wheat grass, so I cut this weed mercilessly.
And I use garlic infusion against the pest. I grind 200 g denticles, fill them with 3 l of water and insist 2 h. Then I squeeze the garlic, filter, top up to 10 l and shed the soil. It is most effective if you apply all these measures in a complex.