Colorado Potato Beetle
Risk near you, next 48h
See whether your local forecast favours this disease right now.
When it strikes
Remove affected material now
Take out the affected leaves, shoots or whole plants before the next wet spell, bag them as you cut, and wash your hands and tools before touching healthy plants.
Soil and crop debris
It waits in the ground or in last season's debris, so removing the plant does not clear the bed. Rotation and debris removal are the working controls.
It carries over to next season in soil, debris or seed — which is why rotation matters here, not just treatment.
Safe to compost
No pathogen carries over on this material, so it can go on an ordinary heap with the rest of the garden waste.
When and where to look
Scout the planting while temperatures hold between 18°C and 33°C.
Rule these out first
Same category, and at least one host crop in common — so they are genuinely confusable in the same part of the garden.
The signs that lead here
Full problem lists for these crops
About
The Colorado potato beetle is the most important insect pest of potatoes and also attacks tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, defoliating plants rapidly and notorious for developing insecticide resistance.
Symptoms
Rounded yellow-and-black striped beetles, plump orange-red humpbacked larvae, clusters of orange eggs under leaves, and rapid defoliation that can strip plants bare.
Organic Treatment
Hand-pick adults, larvae and egg clusters daily, mulch deeply, spray spinosad or Bt tenebrionis, and rotate potatoes far from last year's bed.
Chemical Treatment
Spinosad or novel-chemistry insecticides, strictly rotated by mode of action because this beetle resists most products quickly.
Prevention
Rotate solanaceous crops widely, use straw mulch and trap crops, cover early growth, and destroy overwintering adults in spring.
Crops at risk
Related problems
Colorado Potato Beetle risk by location
Each location has a month-by-month profile computed from the weather archive: how many hours a year actually meet this disease’s thresholds.