Gardening on a farm

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Salaam
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Gardening on a farm

#1

Post: # 51338Unread post Salaam
Thu Jul 29, 2021 1:14 pm

We were given, for $100!, a 90x90' piece of farmland to garden on. The farmer tine tilled it for us at the beginning and we have use of a rototiller.

Anyway, having only gardened at home on beautiful soil on a small scale of 400 square feet, I wasn't quite prepared for this new adventure on clay soil full of weeds!

The clay has its benefits but the weeds are shocking especially the quackgrass. Couple of weeks without weeding and it's up to your knees or maybe thighs.

And then there are the bugs: potato beetles, cucumber beetles, and so many others I've never seen before!

If you all have any advice to offer on how to deal with especially the quack grass, given that we're only able to go to the garden once or maybe twice a week, I would appreciate it.

I have a plan to silage tarp one 10x50' area from this fall through next year till spring 2023. Maybe I'll expose the soil in spring and fall to get the weeds to germinate before putting the tarp back on.
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Rockoe10
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Re: Gardening on a farm

#2

Post: # 51341Unread post Rockoe10
Thu Jul 29, 2021 1:33 pm

Weeding is the key to both the unwanted grass, but also many of the pest insects. So, how to weed efficiently is the fastest way to achieving your goals.

Setting up neat rows are a great way to set yourself up for success. Laying plastic is another.

There are great tools that exist to make weeding quick, between rows. Like the propane weed burners. Literally killing them with fire. And this helps to kill the seeds buried in the upper part of the soil too.

Amending the soil is expensive, and if this is a temporary garden space, it wouldn't make much financial sense to put money into that part of the garden.

Another thing you could do to help with pests, is put in some cheap berry bushes. This will give good bugs a place to over winter near your garden.

Those are my two hundredths of a dollar thoughts anyway
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Cole_Robbie
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Re: Gardening on a farm

#3

Post: # 51345Unread post Cole_Robbie
Thu Jul 29, 2021 1:45 pm

I second the tarping idea.

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Re: Gardening on a farm

#4

Post: # 51354Unread post PlainJane
Thu Jul 29, 2021 3:18 pm

Tarping and cover crops like field peas to get yourself a workable area.
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Re: Gardening on a farm

#5

Post: # 51411Unread post bower
Fri Jul 30, 2021 7:14 am

So true what Rockoe said about the weeds and pests.
Tarping is especially great for vegs that love the extra soil warmth like squash and beans and tomatoes and peppers.
We have a lot of weed pressure at my friend's farm but they don't tarp most crops. The spacing between rows is large to allow the wheel hoe to go in between. IDK if that would work as well for the grass. There is lots of grass at the farm but my impression is that after a couple of seasons of tilling, the grass is not invading the tilled area. There is still lots of hand weeding to do all the same for the other weeds.
One useful technique for weed pressure on a farm is to sow your seeds very densely in a tight band. This makes it much easier to weed when the time comes. You just push back the band of your crop with one hand and strip out the weeds with the other, then hill back a bit of dirt. Later on you can thin as needed if called for by the crop. For this technique it's important to have good seed and plenty. Old seed leaves a lot of gaps and competes poorly with the weeds, so you can lose the advantage that dense bands provide. Leave plenty of space between rows. That also allows your crop to access enough moisture without constant watering, in spite of dense planting.
I recommend William Dam as a seed supplier with excellent deals on larger seed packets, and good fresh seed. You need to order well in advance of your needs though because they are a bit slow getting out their orders.
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Re: Gardening on a farm

#6

Post: # 51415Unread post stone
Fri Jul 30, 2021 8:27 am

No picture.

It sounds like maybe you've set yourself up for problems.

were your plantings done in single rows?

When I garden, I like the 'raised bed' technique. The beds aren't actually raised, you just plant a double row down them or broadcast seeds.

leave wide walks between beds. those paths can be mulched or mowed. the 'raised beds' should be mulched as soon as possible. By only walking in the aisles, they settle some, and this creates the appearance of raised beds.

mulch with whatever is available... woodchips, old hay, whatever.

Weeding should be almost zilch.

OK, about bugs... a lot of that can be caused by failing to interplant. Bugs love big patches of monoculture.

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Re: Gardening on a farm

#7

Post: # 51456Unread post Pippin
Fri Jul 30, 2021 5:57 pm

If by quackgrass you mean Elymus repens, the perennial grass with underground rhizomes, then at least the flaming will not work very well as the rhizomes have a lot of energy for new growth. Good news is that it does not tolerate shade and can easily been killed by black plastic or other cover in one season. It does not form a viable seed bank but requires fresh seed to propagate by seeds. So if you get rid of the perennial forms and don’t get fresh seeds back from anywhere, it will not be a major problem in the following years.

If the land was an old pasture or other perennial grass for several years, you may have click beetle larvae, wireworms, in the soil for next 2-3 years. (Hopefully the name is correct as needed to google the English term.) Now that these worms cannot eat the grass roots anymore, they will likely go eating your plant roots. They have not been a major problem for me in similar situation but don’t be surprised if you see some sticking in root crops like potatoes or carrots when you harvest. They will also eventually disapear because the adults mainly lay the eggs on perennial grass land. The larvae lives in the soil for more than one year.
BR,
Pippin

Salaam
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Re: Gardening on a farm

#8

Post: # 51570Unread post Salaam
Sun Aug 01, 2021 2:15 pm

Thanks everyone for your suggestions I will take all of them into advice. I am going to turn off 10 by 50 ft area that's the size tarp I have from this fall through next growing season to Spring of 2023 and I'll see how that does. I'll also try growing more using agricultural fabric and different types of spacing that makes weeding easier. I will also try a cover crop again on a smaller area maybe a couple of weeks from now that will get winter killed. Good experimenting!

Here are some pictures of before and after weeding. I think these weeds were about two maybe three weeks old.
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Re: Gardening on a farm

#9

Post: # 51588Unread post bower
Sun Aug 01, 2021 6:29 pm

That is a lot of grass!
Looks lovely after weeding though. :) Hope you have excellent crops.
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Re: Gardening on a farm

#10

Post: # 51628Unread post JRinPA
Mon Aug 02, 2021 9:43 am

My questions would be
how long will you have it for?
are you growing for market?
are you going to use drip tape or other irrigation?

That would help decide how much money to spend and whether you want to use the whole plot each year.

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Re: Gardening on a farm

#11

Post: # 51807Unread post Salaam
Fri Aug 06, 2021 9:15 am

JR, this is just for personal/community/church consumption for now. We don't know how long we will have the land, but I would guess at least five years or so. We have irrigation available - overhead watering - but the soil is clay with a high water table and underground drainage, so water is not much. of and issue.
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Re: Gardening on a farm

#12

Post: # 51836Unread post JRinPA
Fri Aug 06, 2021 5:58 pm

Sounds like a great chance to try to grow everything you've ever wanted to try.

I'll take some pics of my plots tonight.
I don't think you can go wrong for row crops by using the woven ground cover, 4ft wide, for raised double rows. Use 8" 8ga sod staples, not the cheapy 6" 11ga. You have to burn holes for the initial use to transplant through. Some use a weed burner with the standard bell. I use a sharpened steel can held with a vise grips, and heat the rim with weed burner torch before each punch. Then a break in between for walking/crop overflow. If you leave the walking paths intact it is easy to weed weekly with a planing type hoe, colinear and speedy hoe are two names I've seen for these. I welded up a collinear type and also use a speedy type, like a little chevron. These are file sharpened cutting blades, just slice off the weeds each week or three depending.
I don't rototill much. I broadfork the rows with a home welded broadfork, and add compost each year.
I have used bio plastic mulch in the past, and it worked fairly well, but it is really expensive for small gardens. For a big plot like that it might make sense using that instead. Only one season of use from that type stuff. Against weeds, the heavy woven is far superior. But the one time use plastic is easy to just tear a hole for the exact spacing you want for that crop. The problem is a big roll that is cost effective is really hard to work with solo. It is really a three person job, one to unroll and two to pin or weigh down the edge. Truck farms of course might have that mechanized to till, shape the row, and lay plastic in one pass.
If you don't have to water, ground cover would be great. I don't like having to overhead water with any type of plastic down. When I plant I like to make a trench connecting the holes in the row so the water funnels to the plants - I used to use a certain board about 2x2". This year I didn't feel like that balancing act so I made a tool for that, a 1x6 board with a pvc pipe, maybe 1.25" wide, screwed to it down the center. So I lay the board down the row of holes and walk on it to make that channel right before transplanting. The it is easy to water them in with hose the first week.
For supplemental water, a lot last month, here, I use drip tape with 4" emitters. Some are from the house water, some I fill barrels and pump them off with a 12v bilge pump and float switch.
I'll take some pics tonight.

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Re: Gardening on a farm

#13

Post: # 51850Unread post rxkeith
Fri Aug 06, 2021 10:31 pm

to keep weeds under control, you either need to weed an area every ten days or use a deep mulch between rows.
waiting two to three weeks is way too long especially with the area you are using. we tilled up part of a field, and
got several bales of old hay from a church member. i spread that several inches thick over the new garden, and moved
it aside when i planted my rows. weeding that area has been fairly easy, but you really do need to stay on top of it those
first few years using a reclaimed field. to break up the clay, incorporate as much organic matter you can get your hands on.
stuff like leaves, dry grass clippings that haven't had herbicide sprayed on it, horse, cow, rabbit, chicken, goat or some other
animal manure that you can work into the soil. clay soil, isn't bad, but it does need to be amended, so it doesn't become rock
hard when it dries. i had clay soil in detroit growing up. it took years before it started crumbling up, but it always grew a decent garden.


keith

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Re: Gardening on a farm

#14

Post: # 51851Unread post JRinPA
Sat Aug 07, 2021 12:35 am

This is my favorite hoe for weeds. I've seen this design called colinear and speedy, online. This is the one I use most. I also welded up a straight/flat colinear hoe from about 8" of 1.5"x.125" flat bar stock and an old tool handle with neck, but it wasn't in the truck so no pic. Keep them sharp and either will keep packed walking rows clear of weeds. The weeding interval depends ground and the weather.
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You can see in the two tomato double rows, there are virtually no weeds where the cloth is down. That ground cover is the dewitt stuff. Two years old. Last year I burned the holes for corn spacing, about 10" in row and 22" between the rows. This year, much easier. After soil prep I just filled each hole with a tomato plant. After the trellis was raised I single/double stemmed to try to run a vine every 6" up the crw. Now, if that was a row of squash this year, there would be a lot of empty holes that I would try to fill with beets or lettuce or something. If not filled, well, a 3" bit of weed patch wouldn't hurt much. But I could not hoe it, only pull by hand.

26 cuostralee in about 20' on their side of the double row.
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In between those tomato rows there is only a few inches of bare ground, with the soil actually backfilled on top, so I have to be careful hoeing there. Not that there are many weeds in that shade. With a big plot on the farm, I don't expect you would run the rows so tight as I have them at this comm garden. Three feet of space between each 4 ft raised/covered row would give you thirteen 90 ft rows! needing about 1200 ft of woven. That is 4 rolls of 300ft. We bought some more this year under $50 per roll I believe. I feel that would be the way to go for weed control and water retention...but its a lot of holes to burn! Come up with a good system for that... Each cut end also needs to be flashed back with the torch, lest it unravel.
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I do use drip tape with 4" emitter spacing underneath. I was glad to have it in July. We've only had about 1-1/2" of rain since the storm in early July, and that was all last week. For the tape itself, I paid $34 for 1000ft at a 20% discount. The fittings run up the price a bit but with straight rows it could be as simple as 90ft of header line, 13 tap w/reg valve fittings, 1 end cap, filter, backflow regulator, pressure reducer.

I run some just from elevated buckets - it drips well enough at 4 ft of head pressure for 30 ft, but I don't know about 90'. The tape needs to stay flat, so for a bucket drip it is bucket - fitting - short garden hose - fitting - drip tape. You just fill the bucket or barrel and let it drip the next few hours.

The other way I use the tape is from a fill barrel on the ground using a boat bilge pump/float switch/old truck battery. From the pump it is garden hose pieces to tee tape fittings, then garden hose to tee tape, repeating. For a $50 purchase to qualify free shipping, I bought a nice breadth and depth of fittings from an online retailer that work great, and much cheaper than small lots on ebay.

These potatoes went up, up, then fell outward. I don't need to walk there so they can have the paths for now. The spuds, mostly whole, were planted straight down through the plastic holes, about 6" down. From the entire row, only one failed to show, and after a while I dug in, found it rotted (a cut potato, cut the day of planting, not healed) and replanted with another.
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This broccoli was harvested for side shoots three times but I pulled them tonight. The first lettuce transplants went in a few weeks ago when I pulled the cauliflower and cabbage that were interspaced. At the grass lane I had corn until 10 days back, with butternut trained up under it. Pretty much weed free with a little work, except along the fence where I can't really weed properly. There is some grass coming up in the row where the potatoes fell out, but I'm not bothering with it.
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My rows are pretty tight. I can get a wheelbarrow in with care. But mostly when I take the wheelbarrow in, I have the woven ground cover pulled up to prep.
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Re: Gardening on a farm

#15

Post: # 51852Unread post JRinPA
Sat Aug 07, 2021 1:30 am

I do plan on leaving the ground cover and tape down this winter, because frankly it is a lot of work to pull it all up and store it, and then the uncovered rows grow weeds over the winter and spring. I imagine I'll disconnect the fittings, but leave them in place. I may have to replace some tape, and the ground cover might wear faster, but it would save the spring prep labor and the tape is cheap enough to cut new ones if needed. That is for a 40 degree N winter though.

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These use 5/8" drip tape tees and valves. Some garden hoses fit them tight enough for low pressure bilge pump. Other hoses are too loose and need hose clamps. Anything running directly off of tap water, I use hose clamps with this style fitting. But since this is bilge pump, no problem with most hoses to just push fit them.
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Peppers and Cantaloupe
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The woven ground cover is folded back on these rows because I had my garlic at the head of each row until last month, and can't fold it back over the butternut or cantaloupe.
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The plot below has drip but no ground cover at present. I do want to get some, at minimum for overwintering, but at the same time I like the way this plot works during the summer, uncovered. It has 6 drip tapes for 3 uncovered double rows. I have a lot of stuff growing together at present, and they were timed into each other to get here. Corn or Okra, cantaloupe, red beets, lettuce transplants, and winter squash in the same patch. The beets and lettuce love that shade. The cantaloupe is hoping to hide from striped cucumber beetles. Those things poison most of my cantaloupe.
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This delicata (two planted next to each other) is supposed to be a short vine, but from the outside looks like a big bush. Looks great right now, but tough to pass.
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The okra never took off this year. Not enough rain or June heat, I guess. Many nights have dropped below 70F, and some nights in July were into the 40s! There are bigger plants a few feet from there but the winter squash is fighting them for space. Last year, with a hot June, the okra in this same patch was tremendously productive.
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There are some minor weeds, but the hoe can get to the outside of this at least. For the most part, the red beets at 2" dibble, double row, shrug off the weeds.
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So, that's about how I like to set up my gardens, and I'd likely do about the same with a 90' by 90' patch. If I didn't need it all, I might well rest 1/3 in cover crops each year, and only use a meager 5400 sq ft LOL. Nah who I kidding, I'd plant it all!

Still, 90ft seems like a long row, even just to walk around. Maybe break them down the center and do 40 ft rows each way with a break in the center. But whatever geometry, I expect you would love the woven ground cover and un-tilled walking paths between double rows.

I have also seen it written that some people like to just leave grass rows in between crop rows, leaving the paths wide enough to mow. Maybe that would work, but it seems to me that the grass would take its share of water from the crops much more than bare ground?
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Re: Gardening on a farm

#16

Post: # 51858Unread post bower
Sat Aug 07, 2021 8:56 am

I have to agree about the 90 foot rows. :) We have 100 foot rows at my friend's farm, and when the going is tough - say hilling potatoes on a hot day, or planting garlic on a bitterly cold one! - I can feel worn out before I finish one row. Short rows give you the 'unit satisfaction' before you're wasted, take a break when you're not exhausted, and then you're good to go for another. It never feels right to take a break before you finish that row.... :roll:

Arable land is scarce enough here that it wouldn't feel right to tarp and leave ground unplanted even for one season, and that is certainly the beauty of what JR is doing by planting with tarps!

I will just mention that my father taught me the local method of reclaiming ground for vegetables by growing potatoes. That is what they did when he was a farmer's son in the century past, before the existence of plastic. I am reclaiming an old garden plot by this method this summer. It's small but you get the idea. I have done the same with my father on his land at a bigger scale and it worked very well on land that was gone to grass. We did not even make drills for the potatoes - we laid them on top of the sod, early in the season when the grass was just beginning to grow. Laid out about 18 inches apart and three rows across. We would leave a couple of feet between the triple rows for the trench. We then start the trench on each side of the bed, turn over the sods and just cover the potatoes with soil. Pieces of turned over sods and weeds went in among the potatoes and the fresh soil from below was used to cover them. After a period of growth when it was time to 'hill' the potatoes (we call it 'trenching the potatoes') we laid fish among the potato plants (capelin) and again dug the weeds and soil to cover that and hill around the potatoes from those trenches on the sides. The potatoes would suppress any regrowth of weeds in the beds, and the trenches stayed pretty bare too. By the end of season you had prepped some nice weed free vegetable beds, and got a crop of potatoes in the process, for only two days work (plus your harvest day). Some people have commented that they would have serious wireworm damage if they planted potatoes in previous grass areas, but we had no wireworm damage when we laid them on top of the sods, although there is certainly wireworms here. Perhaps they stayed busy on the deep roots of the grass that was buried undisturbed.
I did mine a bit differently because I have a mix of mostly perennial herb weeds in the meadow there with some grass. I dug single drills with the pick and turned over the sods onto the area I would later trench. It didn't completely suppress the perennials but somewhat. These were trenched a week or ten days ago. My dad's method with triple rows was less work. If you have deep soil not too rocky or full of tree roots, wide beds and narrow trenches work fine.
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Salaam
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Re: Gardening on a farm

#17

Post: # 52057Unread post Salaam
Wed Aug 11, 2021 10:09 am

Thanks, JR, Keith, and Bower for your detailed suggestions. I'll take them all into advisement. A smaller plot, sunbelt fabric, and I think cover crops are a must for decent soil health.

Our corn is doing well. Same for the potatoes. We're started harvesting some potatoes from the patch defoliated by the potato beetles
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(see photo). The other patch is, I would guess, a couple of weeks away from harvest.

A good surprise is the winter squash which is starting to really spread and shade the weeds.
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Re: Gardening on a farm

#18

Post: # 52067Unread post bower
Wed Aug 11, 2021 4:08 pm

Wow... so glad we don't get potato beetles. Yet.
Glad to hear you're getting a harvest in spite of them.
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Re: Gardening on a farm

#19

Post: # 52085Unread post JRinPA
Wed Aug 11, 2021 10:50 pm

Yeah, that's a shame. We have False Colorado Potato Beetle here. It is basically the same thing from waht I can see, with a different color shell. Maybe they aren't as prolific. They hit my eggplant but I'll have to look closely at the potatoes.

If you can use Sevin dust, that works pretty well against potato beetles. I have yet to find a good way to deal with striped cucumber beetles.

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Re: Gardening on a farm

#20

Post: # 52105Unread post GoDawgs
Thu Aug 12, 2021 8:41 am

Here are a few articles from my files about dealing with those potato beetles:

Control Colorado Potato Beetle with a Mix of Strategies
http://www.vegetablegardener.com/item/5 ... strategies
Oops! It looks like this link doesn't work anymore. Here's some excerpts:

The feeding beetles lay yellow-orange eggs clustered in groups, usually on the undersides of leaves. The larvae, which look like fat, globular, slow-moving caterpillars, change from brown to pink as they grow, developing two rows of black spots along each side of their abdomen≥

Handpicking may be all you need to protect a small plot of potatoes. Picking is easiest early in the day when the beetles are cold and slow to move. Collect the beetles in a wide-mouth jar, coffee can, or deep baking pan, half full of soapy water. Place the container below leaves with beetles or larvae and shake the plant. The insects will fall into the container and drown. Larvae and egg masses also can be squished on the leaves. Gloves make the job easier.

Planting dates turn out to be important for the control of Colorado potato beetle. A standard recommendation is to plant potatoes very early (early April in Ohio, for instance), so that the plants bloom before June, and the beetle damage occurs too late to affect yield.

Planting potatoes in, or just beneath, a thick straw mulch has been shown to reduce damage from a number of potato pests, including aphids and flea beetles, as well as Colorado potato beetles.

Using row covers is a useful tactic. Anchor the covers securely into the soil because Colorado potato beetles are strong walkers and could move in under unburied row cover edges.

A number of new Btt (Bacillus thuringiensis tenebrionis) products have high selectivity for Colorado potato beetles and virtually no mammalian toxicity. Btt works best against the early larval stages, so must be timed properly. Wait until all the egg masses have hatched. You can tell because only the shells will be left, and little larvae will be crawling nearby. The larvae have to eat the Btt from the leaf, so coat the leaves thoroughly, especially the undersides.


Row cover and a plastic lined trench
https://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/gard ... le-control

Several sprays
http://www.extension.umn.edu/garden/ins ... o-beetles/

I would add patrolling potato plants daily to spot the first adults, and start a bit before the time you saw the first ones this year. Then hand pick any adults you see, dropping them into a can of soap water. This is best done in the morning when they are active. Also pick off any of the pink colored, jelly-like larvae you find and crush any yellow/orange egg clusters you find. Numbers will decrease over several weeks. It's a slow process, combing through your plants on each side of the row but it pays off not only in keeping this year's beetles in check but also reducing next year's numbers. Adults will fall off the plants, bury into the ground and re-emerge next year to lay eggs but not if you get them first!

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