This year we decided to grow potatoes, and we did. To be honest everything was going quite fine, and then came the potato beetle….a very difficult pest to control!

I have to say being new at growing potatoes, you never know what to expect. Every year can be very different depending on the heat, humidity and rain. The best suggestions I got from friends was to manually remove the beetles daily however they were too fast for me and defoliated my plants…arg!

The good news is we did get a small crop of beautiful red potatoes that I was able to pull shortly after the plant perished. The potato Beetle has developed a resistance to many insecticides, we need to understand every time you try to control the natural environment it has its way of fighting back! Lesson learned, do not leave them to destroy the plants….and read up on the little critters and how to best control them.

What I was able to learn and share with you is this. When growing crops in small lots it is easier to deal with, pest control, fungus and other nasty enemies of our food, when crops like potatoes are grown for mass production you can imagine how much pesticide can be dropped per acre to save a crop!

I do believe we should go back to small farming, utilize the land for organic growing and get away from the large scale farming we see today. The negative impact on the land, our environment and our well being will be greatly reduced.

From dirt…

to delicious!

Enjoy growing!

Stacey

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