🥔 Colorado Potato Beetle

How to identify

Adults are unmistakable: round, yellow-orange beetles about 3/8 inch long with ten black stripes down the wing covers. Larvae are plump, humpbacked, and reddish-orange with black spots — they look like tiny toxic gummy bears.

Damage signs

Both adults and larvae chew foliage down to the veins, and potatoes with no leaves make no tubers — heavy defoliation can wipe out a crop. They also hit eggplant and tomatoes, and they're famous for evolving resistance to every chemical thrown at them.

Plants it attacks

Potato, eggplant, tomato, pepper

Non-chemical controls

• Handpick adults, larvae, and the yellow-orange egg masses on leaf undersides daily — drop everything in soapy water. Tedious but devastatingly effective.
• Rotate potatoes to a new spot each year, ideally 100+ yards from last year's plot — overwintering adults emerge hungry where potatoes used to be.
• Mulch heavily with straw; it confuses emerging beetles and gives ground beetle predators habitat.
• Plant a trap crop of early potatoes or eggplant at the plot edge to concentrate beetles where you can vacuum or handpick them.
• Use a handheld vacuum in the morning when beetles are sluggish — weird, fast, and weirdly satisfying.
• Encourage natural enemies: ladybugs, predatory stink bugs, and ground beetles all eat eggs and larvae.