Welcome to Pest Alert. This is the time each year when we begin to notice that beans in the garden are showing a puckering of the leaf and potatoes may be showing a burn on the edges of the leaves. Some of this injury may be due to feeding injury from the potato leafhopper. Potato leafhoppers entered the area about two to three weeks ago, traveling on upper level winds from their overwintering grounds in southern Louisiana.
Insecticides used for aphid control are generally effective against leafhoppers.
If leafhoppers have moved onto other feeding sites, insecticidal controls are unnecessary. Another similar leafhopper may transmit a disease called Aster yellows. Aster yellows is vectored by the Aster leafhopper, sometimes also called the six-spotted leafhopper. Aster leafhoppers overwinter in Louisiana, Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma and are blown northward on the same winds that carry the potato leafhoppers to the area. The direction of the wind currents in any given year will determine if either leafhopper arrives in numbers adequate to cause problems.