Cucumber Beetles and Neem Oil Concentrate

Cucumber beetles can be a real menace to Cucurbitaceae family and it looks like they’ve arrived a bit early this year because of the summer-like temperatures. According to various sources, once the males feed (they’ve already started about 2-3 days ago) they seek females and mate. The females lay eggs 8-25 days after mating and the eggs hatch in about 5-8 days. The worm-like grubs emerge and spend the next 2 weeks feeding and we’ll get first generation beetles in about a month. So we should see even MORE of them in the middle of July.

I want to keep the pumpkin patch organic, but at the same time I want to make sure that these little buggers don’t kill the plants and/or infect the plants with disease. My goal this year to yield about 100+ pumpkins. That might seem like a really high number, but I am growing a couple of Jack-Be-Little plants (the tiny variety) so I’m sure I can get two to three dozen of these which should account for about a third of the 100.

The other day, I began researching organic methods of controlling these pests and stumbled upon a little thing called Neem Oil Concentrate which is an oil derived from the fruits and seeds of an Indian Evergreen tree known as the Neem. It was under $20 at the local garden store and since it’s in a concentrated form, it’ll make more then I’ll be able to use all year. It is also said to help control powdery mildew, which will come in hand towards the end of the growing season. You can see the damage that the beetles have caused in the images below. From the looks of it, they have taken bites out of all of the plants in my patch, but they are more fond of certain breeds, especially the Atlantic plant.

So today I sprayed two of the plants (the Atlantic and the very small one on the east side of the patch) and I also gave all of the plants a drink of fertilizer. I spread out about 6 tablespoons over three watering cans and applied them to all of the plants. Most of them already have a nice deep green color, but I’d love a nice growth spurt!