Squash Vine Borers........

[Greenthumb18]

It seems as though I and I'm sure others are having a hard time dealing with the squash vine borers . Their going in my pumpkins and squash plants. I have gourds growing everywhere in the garden and the squash bug doesn't seem to bother it because of the solid stems, If only the pumpkins had solid stems. Today i went out with a needle and started to poke the needle in the stems of the plants where i suspected the squash worm to be. It didn't take long to catch the little beasts and i quickly feed them to the quails. I'm thinking with the pumpkin vines to get as many of these worms out as i can find, then bury the vine up to get roots to grow. Maybe the pumpkins will be fine after and hopefully produce some pumpkins.

 

[vfem]

Good luck... I did the same thing and it was no good. After I removed all the worms, the pumpkins gave in and died just a few days later.

Then today I noticed a borer or 2 in my acorn squash after I just found some beautiful squashes on them!? Grrrrrrrr

Same things.... needles, digging, removing and burying vine.... and now... we wait.

 

[obsessed]

You could try BT. You will need to inject the plant along the vine to kill the boerer. The bad part is that the SVB lays its eggs in the soil almost ensuring that next year you will the same issue. I didn't check your zone but maybe you can hope for a long hard freeze. I can't. I gave up on any squash/pumkins. I had the SVB for two years now and don't want to waste my time. Maybe after a few years I will try again with row covers.

 

[vfem]

Thanks Obsessed, I was thinking... I was wrapping my vine in foil (doesn't work!) what it I was to wrap the base of my vine, and use something like weed cover fabric to lay under the vine so the borer larva can't come up through the dirt?

 

[obsessed]

That could work but you would also have to use row cover to prevent any SVB from coming to your garden from your neigbors or such. Then I think you should be ok. I tried the BT but it was just too much work for me. I am slowly dawindaling (sp brain fart) down my corps to things which are easy and low maintance. At first I wanted to grow everything but life tends to get in my way. And with work and kids and soccer and ROTC and .... I just don't have a lot of time to work in the garden. So if I only grow plants that are easy for me then I can keep the relaxation of the garden and the work out of the garden. Unfortuately that means no more squash/pumkin but also no more SVB

Natalie