What is up everyone? Welcome back to the podcast, the epic gardening podcast. My name's Kevin. Today we're talking about

Asparagus beetles. So asparagus is one of those plants that we can grow this fall. So we might be running into

asparagus beetles. Hopefully not, but you might be. So if you are, this is how to both identify them and how to get rid of them.

So the first thing to know is that there are two types of asparagus beetles.

Now both of them actually target asparagus beetles. Now both of them actually target asparagus and both of them

attack spears that are coming out of the ground very new. They attack the early spears. So the most common one you're going to find is the

Crioseris asparagi and that attacks your garden variety asparagus.

It also attacks the wild asparagus,

but we're probably not growing wild asparagus,

so we're only focused on the garden asparagus.

It is metallic blue to black has these creamy sort of yellowish spots and these reddish

kind of margins on the wing. So that is that is the common asparagus beetle.

The other asparagus beetle is called the adult spotted asparagus beetle.

It kind of looks like a gigantic ladybug, so it's mostly red or an orange-y red,

and it has 12 black spots, but they're not tiny little dots.

They are a bit bigger and a bit larger and not as uniform.

So how do we get rid of these guys? What do they do? How do we get rid of them? Well, the first thing to talk about is the life cycle. So both of these Beatles will overwinter as adults in debris and trash they will emerge early and they will

start to lay eggs in rows actually they lay eggs in rows of around three to eight eggs and they'll lay them on the new spears of

asparagus. Once those larva come out, they start to move upwards, they just basically

run up the spear and eat the whole way.

After they get so fat, they basically just fall off of the spears.

They pupate and then the adult beetle

...