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Sorrel can be increasingly found in gardens as a cultivated plant. Useful properties and taste with a characteristic sourness provide the plant with a lot of fans. Like other crops, sorrel is prone to diseases, various pests that must be fought in order to reap a rich harvest. Often bugs eat huge holes on sorrel, so gardeners try all effective means to combat green pests.
Why is sorrel in holes
When holes appear on the sorrel, experienced gardeners immediately make a diagnosis – a sorrel leaf beetle. It is a fast and dangerous pest. If the plant is not treated in time, the crop may die completely. Adults eat through holes, and larvae hatched from eggs feast on the pulp between the veins.
Outwardly, the pest looks like a bug 3-4 mm long. Color – emerald green with a blue, metallic sheen. Females have a large abdomen, move much more slowly than males. The wings are fully developed. Pests begin to feed immediately after wintering, as soon as the first leaves appear. By the end of spring, green beetles mate and lay eggs. After laying eggs, a week passes, the first pest larvae appear. Then the pupation process takes place, which takes place in the soil. From there comes an adult – a new pest.
They mate again with females, after a short period of time they die. Females have time to lay eggs again, which can be found on the underside of the leaf.
Experts say that when already young bugs are found, it is almost impossible to save the sorrel crop, since the number of pests is too large.
What to do if sorrel leaves in a hole
First of all, if holes are found on the leaves, all weeds must be removed. The sorrel leaf beetle can perfectly reproduce on them. Be sure to feed after watering the cultivated plant with slurry.
Some gardeners cover plantings of sorrel in the spring. So you can not only get rid of the leaf beetle, but also please the household with early greenery.
If a pest is found, especially if there is a lot of it, the most damaged specimens should be removed.
Some gardeners prefer hand picking as a control method. To do this, you need a concentrated saline solution, where bugs and eggs are collected from sorrel with your hands. In any case, treatment with chemical insecticides is not recommended, as the sorrel will become unfit for food.
How to get rid of bugs on sorrel
There are many ways to fight. In terms of efficiency, they are not inferior to each other, but each gardener, depending on the degree of sorrel damage, chooses the most suitable one:
- Treat with a drug called “Maxim”. This is a chemical insecticide, so all treated leaves should be cut off without fail. Eating such greens is prohibited. But the crop will be saved, because new leaves grow quickly on sorrel. It will be already healthy, full-fledged greens.
- Mix 200 g of pyrethrum powder with a bucket of hot water. Leave for 12 hours and rub with laundry soap. Then spray all affected plants with the resulting solution.
- Pollinate (without using water) the leaves with sorrel with a mixture of wood ash and tobacco dust in a ratio of 1: 1. The procedure is repeated, it is better to do the course for 5-6 days. Then the result will be higher and fixed for a long time.
- And you can also pollinate the plant with a mixture of a glass of ash and a large spoonful of dry mustard with hot black pepper.
- Grate a piece of laundry soap into 3 liters of water and squeeze out as much garlic as possible. After a few hours, strain the resulting solution and sprinkle the sorrel. If you feel sorry for the garlic – garlic tops or arrows of the plant will do.
The problem with the fight is that when using chemicals, you can not eat sprayed sorrel for at least a month. But while the gardener waits for a whole month, oxalic acid accumulates in the leaves, and by the end of this period, sorrel is no longer useful, but harmful to health. Young leaves bring the greatest benefit, and therefore, even after processing, it is better to cut off the sorrel damaged by the beetle and wait for the new crop to appear. By autumn, leaves will grow that are suitable for winter harvesting. Therefore, in order to avoid holes in the sorrel, it is better to take preventive measures against the green beetle.
preventive measures
The main preventive measures against the appearance of holes in the leaves in sorrel are:
- deep digging of the garden in the fall to destroy wintering insects and larvae;
- removal of suspicious leaves with holes at the first appearance;
- a thorough inspection of the plant to identify the pest at an early stage;
- in the spring it is also worth loosening the aisles;
- every 2–3 years, change the landing site, and treat the former with chemicals or simply sprinkle with ash;
- when changing the landing site, it is important that crops of the buckwheat family, for example, rhubarb, have not been planted there before, otherwise there is a danger of picking up the same pest in a new place.
Experienced gardeners advise planting plants around the sorrel that successfully repel the pest. For the leaf beetle, such plants are marigolds, calendula, feverfew, garlic, nasturtium.
And also experts noted that planting sorrel in partial shade is the best option. So the leaves turn out to be softer and more palatable, and many times less pests were noticed on the crop.
If only the first small holes appear on the leaf, it is better to immediately pick, rinse and eat. It’s a useful product and it’s best not to spray it with chemicals. Therefore, experts advise to regularly inspect the leaves, in order to identify the first symptoms. Large-scale destruction using chemicals should be started if there are eggs and a large number of damaged leaves.
Conclusion
On sorrel, the pleasantly colored bugs, which children call fireflies, may not immediately attract attention. But in fact, this is a dangerous pest that is capable of destroying the entire crop of a useful product in a season. Therefore, it is worth taking preventive measures, since it is difficult to deal with the leaf beetle: it is impossible to spray with chemicals, and other means are effective until the pest is unrestrained. The leaves should be inspected regularly and at the first appearance of small holes, the product should be plucked, washed and eaten, and the plant should be sprayed with one of the folk remedies.