chard - how to beat the leaf miner?

[Alchemilla]

I love chard! Hence it was one of the first vegetables I grew last year - even though my garden isn't even finished. However, to my great disappointment, within a few weeks beet leaf miners aka Pegomya beta arrived and started munching through the tasty leaves. I still got a few meals by manual control and destroying eggs/infected leaves as they appeared, but lost about 70% of my crop to the constant reinfestations.

Pegomya is obviously present in the local area and if they found my chard once, they can find it again (plus now my soil is likely harbouring pupae...). So if I grew chard again this year, I suspect I am likely to get the same poor result.

Is anyone successfully growing chard with leaf miners present? How do you do it? Does mesh help?

[Scarlet]

I'm not sure you are guaranteed to get the same problem again though you may not want to chance it! One year I had them on my beetroot, I did the same as you, just kept picking off the affected leaves but there was no sign of them the following year.
Enviromesh should stop the problem. Good luck!

[Penellype]

I find that once summer arrives I need to use fine insect mesh on anything that I want to eat the leaves of. I think you can safely assume that if a plant produces nice, succulent, tasty leaves there will be an insect that wants to eat them!

[Jungle Jane]

With a lot of pests it's good to have a crop rotation plan,so you don't grow the same thing in the same place. If you have two areas of the crop,one area could be untouched,this happened with peas & rocket in my garden. Leaf miners were in my little trug of rocket but not on the table of rocket,the only difference is my table had a marigold & a nasturtium on it. Maybe the table with flowers has predatory insect risk I don't know?

[Penellype]

Marigolds and nasturtiums are good pest deterrents - I have noticed that the leaf miners particularly like nasturtium leaves so perhaps they go for these in preference to the rocket. The same goes for aphids, which tend to prefer nasturtiums to beans and peas. I think marigolds may work because of their smell which may mask other smells or put off the pests.

[Alchemilla]

Thanks all! Seems mesh is the way to go. Will also definitely add companion plants in the long run.