Colorado potato beetle larvae

Let me just preface by saying…

Eww… eeeewwwww… and  EEEEWWWWWWWWW!

I now have a new pest in the garden – the Colorado potato beetle, a notoriously hard insect to control.  Anytime I encounter a new bug, my first reaction is to destroy them in the most violent way possible.  Because my flamethrower was out for repairs, I considered dousing the plants with gasoline and tossing a match to create an instant fireball, but I ran the risk of singeing off my eyebrows.

I resorted to my old reliable, natural garden insecticides – neem oil and diatomaceous earth.  I sprayed the potato plants every few days, which helped slow down the icky bugs, but unfortunately, there were some who escaped the “rain of death.”  For those larvae who went on the lam – the only other sure-fire method of eradication was to pick them off the leaves BY HAND. For this cringe-worthy process, I donned my rubber gloves and plopped the ugly bugglies into a jar of soapy water where they met their demise.