Here I was thinking that vegetable gardening is bliss. That is until the insects arrive. My beets came down with a case of leaf miner and at almost the same time that Sinfonian had leaf miner on his spinach.
I did some research on how to deal with these insects and I did not find much information that appealed to me. Most pages said to use a pesticide called sevin, I found this product and read the label, It stated something along the line of "if the person is unconscious do not induce vomiting." Needless to say I did not purchase this product. So you may say, then what are you going to do about these little buggers that are destroying your beets?I got ruthless. First I removed all the leaves except one emerging leaf per plant and disposed of the infested leaves in the garbage.
I then took a 1L spray bottle, added 2 tsp of dish soap and 2 tsp of cooking oil then filled the rest with water and lastly I mixed till it was bubbly. Once this was done I soaked the soil and plants with this mixture and then went plant by plant spray the underside of each leaf that was left. I will repeat this every 5 days and after heavy rains for a couple weeks in hope it will take care of them.
I have had good success with this insecticide with house plants so I am hoping it will work equally as well outside. If this fails I will try pyrethrin, this is made from the chrysanthemum plant. This is organic and relatively safe for humans a few days after the spraying but it is very deadly to bee's.
