What has been your experiences with spraying and not spraying for flea beetles in Canola? They are out of control this year. Even new alfalfa ( seeded last spring) is full of holes and seems to be losing plants.
This year had some canola at 3 to 4 leaf stage, leafs over an inch wide, go from a few bite marks to nothing but stems in 3 days. Could easily find 10 or 20 beetles ( or more) on any remaining plant. Rep was quite excited, worst she had seen. Sprayed them as fast as I could obtain chemical, most plants seem to be recovering. All other feilds were behind that in maturity, mostly cotelydons to 1 or 2 small leaves, most areas were gaining in spite of the high pressure and leaves being 25 to 50% eaten , but after seeing what happened to the big plants, I sprayed all I could before the rain storm. Still have 2 quarter that didn't get sprayed, they have lots of damage, but not seeing many beetles in this wet cold weather. Not sure if this will allow the plants to get ahead enough, or if i'll still need to spray, which will make a big mess after over 2" of rain on what was already saturated.
At first they were worst on plowed hay sod, but the worst feild mentioned above was direct seeded into sod, direct seeded into stubble was only marginally better
My only previous reference is 2 years ago with no rain I had patches where I could hardly find the remains of a plant ( cotelydon stage mostly) they were eating them so much faster than they could grow, but when it eventually rained, those patches outgrew the beetles and were indistinguishable by fall.
So did I waste my time and money? Will they always come back from having all foliage removed? What has been worst case for you, delayed growth, or lost crop?
Really didn't want to spray insecticide, killing all the good guys has to have consequences when the next pest moves in.
This year had some canola at 3 to 4 leaf stage, leafs over an inch wide, go from a few bite marks to nothing but stems in 3 days. Could easily find 10 or 20 beetles ( or more) on any remaining plant. Rep was quite excited, worst she had seen. Sprayed them as fast as I could obtain chemical, most plants seem to be recovering. All other feilds were behind that in maturity, mostly cotelydons to 1 or 2 small leaves, most areas were gaining in spite of the high pressure and leaves being 25 to 50% eaten , but after seeing what happened to the big plants, I sprayed all I could before the rain storm. Still have 2 quarter that didn't get sprayed, they have lots of damage, but not seeing many beetles in this wet cold weather. Not sure if this will allow the plants to get ahead enough, or if i'll still need to spray, which will make a big mess after over 2" of rain on what was already saturated.
At first they were worst on plowed hay sod, but the worst feild mentioned above was direct seeded into sod, direct seeded into stubble was only marginally better
My only previous reference is 2 years ago with no rain I had patches where I could hardly find the remains of a plant ( cotelydon stage mostly) they were eating them so much faster than they could grow, but when it eventually rained, those patches outgrew the beetles and were indistinguishable by fall.
So did I waste my time and money? Will they always come back from having all foliage removed? What has been worst case for you, delayed growth, or lost crop?
Really didn't want to spray insecticide, killing all the good guys has to have consequences when the next pest moves in.
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