Well, the squash vine borers have laid seige to the pumpkin plants, but we're fighting back and winning! I scraped off eggs this morning and we've been diligently applying Bt. Hubby is also still shooting Bt in the vines as well.
The hornworms attacked my pepper plants this past spring as well as my lemon balm plant. I hate those things!
Early Signs of Squash Vine Borer?
Here's my nemesis, the adult squash vine borer, on one of the pumpkin plants. If I could kill this sucker before it flew off, I'd be a happy camper!!
So THAT'S what they look like. I don't ever remember seeing one, but from the evidence we must be visited by them frequently....
You must be having a 2nd generation there?
Don't know what generation it is, but I'd like for it to be the LAST generation in my garden!
Nice shot!
The one I saw had a little more blue color on it. Are you finding that they're getting into the leaf nodes of the pumpkin plants, in addition to the base? Makes it more difficult to keep control of.
I destroyed a lot of squash bug eggs today and a couple of groups of babies that had recently hatched. Felt pretty satisfied that I was able to get rid of lots of bugs in their earlier stages. Powdery mildew is setting in on the remaining pumpkin plants. Do you guys spray with baking soda and water or use another solution? It was just too dang hot and humid today for me to mess with.
Had my first big tomato harvest today and made some pizza sauce. All the herbs and everything were from my garden, except for the garlic and a bit of olive oil. I'd like to make the pizza dough from scratch as well, but I don't know if I can find the time. It's worth it, though, to eat real, fresh ingredients instead of these science experiments that we buy at the store.
Good luck to everyone fighting bugs and everything else!
Thanks Stephanie. I've been wondering what those things looked like and I haven't seen any either. What form of BT does your husband shoot up the vines with? All I can find in the stores around here is the Dipel dust which is a pain. I want some liquid for next year but it's hard to find even online.
I had zukes and yellow squash last year that started bearing very slowly about 3 weeks before frost. I didn't have the borer problem with them so I'm going to try for a repeat.
I put BT on my maters yesterday in spite of hearing thunder and the weather liars said I had 70% chance of rain today and so far nothing. I searched the plants and didn't find any new damage or worms. Yay!
Dividedsky congrats on your maters. I make my own pizza too. I can't get over what they charge for those ready to bake crusts in the store. I usually make 2 or 3 batches when I'm in the mood and freeze it individually wrapped. It works well if I can plan ahead to take it out to thaw.
Dividedsky, by the time I see the first squash bugs they seem to be all over, and I planted my summer squash so thickly that it was just a forest of leaves quite early, making it hard for me to monitor what was going on. How do you set up your squash rows? I'm never sure whether it's better to plant them in hills or in a long row. This year I did a row, but probably put them too close together or didn't thin them out enough once I could see what had germinated.
We use Bt Worm something or other from Green Light. It's a liquid and cannot stay mixed for more than 12 hours. He sprayed the plants well, under the leaves, along the stems, tops of leaves. He also sprayed the pepper plants and the tomatoes for hornworms as it kills those, too.
When I was out looking for eggs this morning, I did notice that some were laid on the leaves, the base of the leaf, and where it attaches to the branch. In case you don't know what the eggs look like, they're very tiny, about the size of the head of a straight pin and brown. They sit on the plant and are fairly easy to scrape off with your fingernail.
"weather liars" - ha! So you roll the pizza dough out and freeze it that way? Or freeze it in a ball? I've never really gotten the hang of making yeast dough products, but I'll give it another shot.
greenhouse gal, I planted two zucchini and two yellow squash too close together. So it's been hard to keep an eye on what's going on in there. It's only been within the past couple of weeks that I've been keeping an eye out for squash bugs. I think they were late this year because of cool weather. I like the idea of planting them in hills, now that you mention it. That would make it easier to crawl around and look at the undersides of the leaves. Before I started gardening, if I'd known how much time I'd spend reading about bugs, encouraging bugs, crawling around looking for bugs in their various stages and killing them . . . I might have choosen another hobby. But now I'm in it to win it! :o) Making hills for the squash sounds like a nice spring workout.
Oh, and regarding garden layout, I got some software called SmartDraw. I'm going to play around with it this fall/winter and post my thoughts on it in that software thread I started ages ago. It's really great software, but I think it might be Windows only.
If anyone needs to see a picture of the squash bug eggs, I have one I can post. I wish I'd taken a photo of the little squash bug hatchlings.
John, we're about due for a photo of your squash plants spilling over that box. I'd imagine that they're already making their way across your yard. :o)
I have a mess of squash I planted - some scallops, some Ronde de Nice (they did best), some of an Italian zucchini, and some Tatume - all in a row next to the peppers and eggplants, which the squash almost obliterated. Hopefully the peppers and eggplants can catch up now that their pushy neighbors are gone to provide fodder for my hens. I think I know what squash bug eggs look like but I just couldn't find any of them in my riot of huge leaves.
Hills aren't really hills but just clusters. I plant my melons in hills around coffee-cans punched with holes and sunk in the ground; good way to get water to their roots. This year my melons were all really bland so it may be time to add some Borax and epsom salts to the water the first time or two, for trace minerals. Or maybe they were bland because of the rain.
Let us know how you like SmartDraw. I ended up using Photoshop Elements, but I keep getting solicitations for a landscape design application that's available for Macs now. I don't know if it would work for a garden layout, though, or how steep the learning curve would be.
I have a watermelon that I think might be just about ripe. And it hasn't gotten much water in the past few weeks. But the weather liars are forcasting lots of rain this week. I hope that doesn't mess it up.
I'll take 3 inches of rain!!!!!! I've had about 1.7 inches since June 20th....l just now I got a couple tenths and desparately need more.
RoJo Grande makes a superb watermelon [Willhite Seed]....as does Sangria, Raspa, and Orangeglo.
This message was edited Aug 17, 2009 7:42 PM
Leslie your mention of the coffee can reminded me of something I've got going on. This year I started keeping a 7 gallon black nursery pot under one of my plum trees for dumping peelings, egg shells and coffee grounds. I have 3 trees and this was a pitiful year for production. They all get rust or some kind of blight about this time every year. The one with the goody pot has one side with ugly leaves and on the side with the pot the leaves are dark green and perfect. A great testament to the power of compost. You might want to add some to your coffee can. I can't get enough of the stuff.
We feed most of that stuff to our chickens. What else do you put in there besides peelings, egg shells and coffee grounds, or is that it? And what do you think is making the difference in that mixture. That's really dramatic! I wonder if that would help the brown rot on my peaches.....
That's about it. I do eat a lot of bananas that are loaded with potassium so maybe that's the magic. The old egg shells had become very thin as though they were really breaking down and that's calcium. The tree also has a lot of new growth on that side. I'm going to move the pot to the other side. I gave the trees a generous feeding with triple 13 back in February and can't see that they did much with it. I think I'll try some epsom salts next winter. I've read that a truly healthy plant fights off a lot of disease and insects. It makes sense.
What would you be using epsom salts for? I had heard that melons need traces of boron and I think it was magnesium, and I think that was why the epsom salts were recommended.
I also stopped using Spray n' Grow after the first two or three applications because my garden was growing so luxuriantly, and maybe that's helped in other years when I persevered.
For one thing, I know my soil is pitiful. It's the next thing to pure sand and is also very acidic. In places even weeds won't thrive. I can add compost and go back in a few weeks and it will have disappeared without a trace. The only solution is to keep regularly feeding it and there just isn't enough organic matter to be had. I'd guess that just about any element a plant uses would be a useful addition. Epsom salts helps the toms and peppers so it might be worth a try. I also want to order some of those microbes and put several inches of chipped tree mulch under them all. I've just got to do something to get my plums back.
Grow blueberries!
A bit of boron might be ok, but watch that one closely as too much is very bad.
Healthy melon plants of sweet varieties produce sweet melons....not always easy to do as melons are about the most disease suseptible veggies/fruits I know of.
I had just one really sweet melon - Précoce du Roc. The others were quite bland. They were Petit Gris de Rennes, Noire de Carmes, Delice du Table, and a Charentais-type. They all had excellent descriptions in their catalogues in terms of flavor and sweetness so I don't know what happened. Our watermelons have been terrific, though, so it hasn't been a total loss.
Ha! I don't know if I can get pics out this week dividedsky but we'll see. I think my squash are lookin great except the acorn squash. Maybe they aren't getting enough water? Surely that can't be it since the others are doing alright. Dunno...
I did manage to spray the base of each vine this evening with insecticidal soap and look around for eggs (as best I know how anyway.)
Oh, and the vines are producing their first blooms. That's always good.
Great...I guess the honeymoon is over. I went outside this evening to inspect my squash and lo and behold, lots of little caterpillars on or underneath leaves. Please tell me this is just some anonymous caterpillar, maybe a horn worm or something.
They can't be good. I've found some that at least look similar burrowed into yellow squash fruits. I've found several SVBs by splitting stems and they were fat, green and about 1" to 1 1/4" long. Those are probably just the very young. I've never found them crawling around on the leaves but obviously they have to because that's where the eggs are laid. Good luck.
Not sure what that is. Pick them of and smoosh them and they'll be dead.
I picked-off a bunch yesterday, then went back out this morning and must have gotten at least 6 more. They are no longer amongst the living. There will be lots more I'm sure...I even saw a moth flying around yesterday but couldn't get to it in time.
They seem to be feasting on the leaves right now. Many of them are underneath the big leaves hidding/ growing under some sort of web. I'd say they're about 3/4" - 1" long.
Those caterpillars enjoying the leaves are not SVB. SVB lay a single egg at a time, on the underside of the stem (or even along the vine or rarely on the fruit itself). When the egg hatches, the tiny worm borrows into the stem right away, and starts its business of destroying the squash vascular system. That's why they're so hard to control- by the time you notice holes, frass or wilting, quite a bit of damage has already been done. And all the action is inside, so aside from injecting BT or performing worm extraction surgery, there's not alot you can do once they're in.
I don't know what you have there, but if they get really bad you could spray with bt (Bacillus thuringensis kurstaki AKA Thuricide) which kills only caterpillars and doesn't harm bees or other insects.
http://www.agorganics.com/products/Thuricide/12/94.html
Those might be "melonworms". http://ipm.ncsu.edu/ag295/html/cucurbit_key.htm
Thanks ned. I was starting to arrive at your conclusion as well after reviewing some earlier posts on this thread and researching online, but I was definately panicked at first. This is my first rodeo and I really want to succeed in growing these squash.
The moths I have seen ceratinly do not look "waspy" and the caterpillers are not "grubby" like SVB. Also, the description of the melonworm in your linked matched my obersavtion from this morning. I examined a worm earlier in more detail in the palm of my hand and noticed two long, slender white stripes running the length of the worm. Anyway, they're basically having a "squash leaf buffet" at my expense so I am having to examine my plants before I leave for work as well as when I get home.
I've been going out to my pumpkins every couple of days and looking for SVB eggs. If I see any, I scrape them off with my finger and squish 'em. We spray Bt weekly. So far, we're ahead in the game!
Here's my fiasco so far...this is my buttercup squash bed with some makeshift trellis I built (inspired by someone else's design, can't remember who/where.) Two vines will grow up, over, and along the fence and into the yard if need be. The third, on the right, will grow on the ground all willy-nilly.
My pumpkins had a sight set back unfortunately...the yard crew sort of whacked them a bit with the weed-eater so I lost about 3' on my best vine. It even had the first female flower I've seen so far on any plant I maintain. This was my fault entirely as I did not mark-off the area. My wife said they would know not to do anything like that so I blame her. Just kidding. Anyway, I am currently building a 1.5' high fence out of chicken wire that I can use to envelope around anything I want to protect. I've got this spool of chicken wire at my disposal so I can make the fence as long as I need as the vines grow. I will talk to the yard service owner Mon or Tue and make clear my wishes so they know to respect the barrier.
So far, so good. We've been spraying the pumpkins weekly and I'm still plucking off eggs when I see them. We've had our first flowers, males of course. Now if I can just get rid of the cucumber beetles!! If it's not one thing it's another. I'm still seeing the SVB moth flying around, too.
Lovely trellis!
I really like the look of natural materials in the garden such as your trellis.
Thanks Twiggy...money's tight these days, right? Well, There's this poor crepe myrtle in the dark corner of my yard and I decided to cannibalize the many shoots it had. Voila! Instant trellis.
I even managed to do this the same weekend I sowed the seeds. As some other threads mention...it's best to set these things up sooner rather than later.
Got 'em!!!! My 1st SVB! Luckily it wasn't in the main vine, but in a minor offshoot at an "intersection." I noticed the sawdust-like frass that was on the vine and honestly, if stephanietx and others hadn't described what to look for I would have been none the wiser and my plants would be dead in due time.
I have counted my chickens and I have 4 so far (even though they haven't hatched!) Just kidding.
Anyway, take a look. We bonded for awhile and took a few pictures for old times sake and then...
And now the million-dollar question...was there only one SVB here? Could another SVB (or more) have burrowed in the main vines? From the pic you can see how the vine looks like a "Y"...could others be in one of these?
Could be another one in there; it's hard to tell. You could take a knife and poke around a bit.
I finally worked up the nerve to do this, but yes, I got my trusty razor and made some incisions where ever I found the saw dust. I say that I worked up enough nerve because I don't know what I'm doing and razors and vines don't mix. First time for everything, so I got right to it and ended up finding/ destroying over six SVB worms. All things considered, it has been a pretty good learning experience. I tried not to be so invasive but you have to cut if you are going to find them, right?
Errr, the squash vines heal pretty well though, right? Is there anything that can be done to help the vines heal? Most of the worms I found were on one of my buttercup squash vines, and it is trellised so burying the cut parts of the vine is not an option!
I found ants on my "mystery" squash vine. It's where I found the 1st SVB and where I made the 1st incisions. This vine is not trellised, so it is sprawling everywhere. I think the ants may have found another SVB because they are busy coming in and out of the area where I made the cut. I think I'll leave them alone for now...