What's up everyone? Welcome back to the Epic Gardening Podcast. Today we are talking about a kind of a weird pest, a pest that maybe you don't know a whole lot about. I know that for a while I didn't really know a lot about it either.

So it is the flea beetle.

It is not a flea, which is surprising,

but you know you got to wonder why they name things certain things or certain ways sometimes why call it a flea beetle if it's not a flea it's a bit misleading don't you think I definitely think so but something I found out is that fleas and

flea beetles actually have almost nothing in common at all. But if it's not a

flea, so what exactly is it and why is it such a deadly and annoying garden pest?

Can you catch them before they jump away?

How do you kill them before they devour your prized veggie plants?

So in this episode we're gonna talk about how do you wipe them out and answer any questions that you have about flea beetles. So let's go ahead and just get right into it. So there is a wide diversity of beetles that are considered flea beetles.

Scientifically in the taxonomic classifications these beetles are all part of Alticini or Altakini, which is part of the

subfamily Galerusane, man these Latin names I can really, I could really use a little bit of simplification with these Latin names I can really I could really use a little bit of simplification with these

Latin names I don't know about you guys the subfamily galarousinae of the beetle family chrysomele.

So we're going to talk today then about the flea beetles that actually impact agricultural crops, especially the food crops that you're probably growing in your

garden. So before we really get into it,

let's talk about some of the flea beetles

that are actually beneficial flea beetles,

as these tend to consume weeds rather than food crops.

So it'd be kind of nice to have some beetles in there munching on your weeds so you don't have to weed yourself.

However, they're pretty limited use cases for these types of beetles.

So you've got the crucifer flea beetle. These will

attack a lot of stuff in the Brassica family. These are really annoying. I mean

honestly growing Brassicaas is a challenge sometimes. So many pests love to munch on the brassica.

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