… as we seem to have planted all their favourite “snacks”.

If you see any small circular holes and tiny round scars on the leaves of your brassicas you may want to have a look for flea beetles. All our cabbages (summer and winter), kohlrabi, sprouting broccoli and now the wallflowers have been attacked.

There are different types of flea beetle – we have the black ones which really do look just like a flea and hop off the plant very quickly if disturbed. They seem to be able to travel, as our affected plants aren’t all together, and they do a lot of damage, particularly to young plants.

I found a very informative article in Which on flea beetles but the long and short of it is we’ve had to spray (and keep spraying), we’re feeding the affected plants with nitrogen fertiliser to hopefully help them recover and weeding thoroughly, especially any shepherd’s purse and hairy bittercress as they can also sustain the beetles.

I’m not keen on spraying but the alternatives didn’t work. Although some websites had recommended moving mint and/or thyme in to the affected area, they weren’t effective (possible we were too late doing this). An other suggestion was flea traps however our beetles seem to wise up to this very quickly (or we were useless at it) and we caught virtually none.

We haven’t had any crops “wiped out” but the damage isn’t good and it is proving difficult to get rid of the beetles.

Reference
http://www.which.co.uk/documents/pdf/flea-beetles-151778.pdf