There are two reasons we choose to start our garden from seed. 1) cost; 2) pests.

We missed getting eggplant started in the spring, and we came across a couple plants in our local garden nursery last weekend. Great! It was the slender eggplant variety and the plants were only $1.99 each. We purchased two.

What we didn’t do was protect our garden from potential pests brought home from the nursery on these eggplants, which appeared quite healthy at the time of purchasing. A couple days later after transplanting into the garden, flea beetle chaos!

Flea beetles are little, black, hard-shelled beetles that can quickly annihilate your garden foliage. They are voracious eaters, chewing numerous little holes in plant leaves, and they are masters of defoliating and killing entire plants.

At the first sign of flea beetles, which we obviously missed, you must act swiftly to rid your plants and garden from these pests. There are several ways you can do this.

From the Farmer’s Almanac: 1) use a homemade spray consisting of 2 cups rubbing alcohol, 5 cups water and 1 Tablespoon of liquid soap; 2) dust your plants with plain talcum powder; 3) use white (or yellow) sticky traps; or 4) use insecticides if it’s early in the season, but these are generally unnecessary in the control of flea beetles on adult plants.

Flea beetles are repelled by catnip and basil, too, so use these as deterrents throughout the entire garden season. Or, conversely, they are attracted by nasturtium and radishes, so you can plant these as “traps” for the flea beetles so that they do not attack other more valuable plants, though that’s not really our choice of attack. We’d rather not attract them at all!

Of course, the best approach to protecting your garden from flea beetles or other garden pests is to inspect any new plants you’re introducing into your garden. Thankfully we caught this in time and have treated our garden accordingly, but you can be sure we’re going to be extra vigilant moving forward!

“The more help a person has in his garden, the less it belongs to him.” — W. H. Davies, Welsh poet & writer

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Do you have gardening questions? Ask our experts in the comments section below. They’d love to share their knowledge with you!

Eggplant Update (6-28-20):

The pests are gone, and while the old leaves still look treacherous, we have our first eggplant of the season!