Squash bugs and svb beware-your days are numbered

I just ordered " White 54 Inch Tulle Fabric Bolt 54 inch 40 Yards " from Amazon (but not directly from them). Including shipping from the vendor, $22.50 but if I'm good about bringing it inside when the season is done and washing it, it should last several years.

I don't have the room but for those who do what about the idea of a high hoop house with the tule netting permantly in place? Seems like it should work!

Newyorkrita, where do you inject? Lots of places? Near the crown? Etc., etc.?

TIA
LAS

In the stem. Look for the frass, you will see the frass comming out of the damaged stem. Inject higher so that the spinosad would have to soak down to were the borer is. I don't think the liquid will go up but it might. I injected in multiple places so as to get everything possible. Remember the stems are hollow. You are aiming for that hollow middle. You can feel when the needle goes thru the plant wall. If you push too much it goes out the other side. I also injected healthy plants that have no borer damage. We will see how it goes. Oh and it would be best for the plants to get to the borers before the wilting.

Google Squash Vine Borer for pictures of the moth (and eggs) and Google Squash Vine Borer damage pictures for pics.

You can buy hypodermic syringes with needles on the internet. I just Googled for "Buy syringe with needle" I ended up buying here at Bulk Syringes.
http://www.bulksyringes.com/

Are you using those big horse syringes, or regular ones? I have a supply left from when I took allergy shots. Could I use those?

Any syringes will do.

Anyone have experience with assassin bugs? It seems they always hatch in my yard just as the squash bugs are really starting to damage the ripening winter squash. (I'm growing pennsylvania dutch crookneck). Today I found some juveniles that cannot fly yet and transported them over to the squash plants. Heh heh. Soon maybe in days they will be old enough to help me kill the squash bugs.

I LOVE my herd of Assassins!!

Heads up. If you find the assasin bug nymphs in a herd they are a lookalike bug, leaf footed something or other. I have made that mistake before.

Yes, I thought I had a herd of Assassins but they were leaf footed bugs. It appears the leaf footed bugs appear in herds and the assassin bug normally does not.

http://www.chotelaboratories.com/garden_diary/?p=3
http://davesgarden.com/guides/bf/showimage/4515/

This message was edited Jul 14, 2013 8:25 AM

Sorry for the confusion, ya'll! I do know the diff between them.

My Assassins camp out (singularly) in the milkweed that runs along my north fence line. They spread out, and put space between themselves
That's how I identify them.

Stinkbug nymphs congregate in crowds, all huddled together, usually on a tomato, aaarrrggghhhh!!!!

My "herd" refers to my Assassin Bugs!

Right now, they're patrolling my eggplants.

How about a Texas trail drive and send a herd of them to Alabama.

LOL!

I'll see if Rowdy & Mr. Faber are available!

Update on the SVB and Spinosad injections.

This plant must still have a borer, it wilts each day. As soon as I harvest the growing zucchini I will be pulling the plant. Pulled the plant next to it which was wilted and found a live borer.

Now these two yellow zucchini are looking very good. In spite of starting out with borers. Hopefully the injections really got them. These plants have totally greened up and are growing. I just harvested a nice yellow zuc from one this morning.

I killed a SVB moth this morning. Waited until she was committed to laying and then squished her.

I just chased - CHASED - a single SVB around my garden until I smashed it. I said a lot of colorful words to it. My neighbors have got to think I'm nuts. Fortunately, they only seem to be bothering my zukes, but the cushaw is back to only putting out male flowers again. :/

Those darn moths are fast. They fly and get away. I killed two by waiting until it landed and committed to laying and then smashed them.

Anyone has a picture of the SVB that caused so much grieves to our squash? I googled the bug and found so many photos that are over whelming to single them out.

Bug files picture


http://davesgarden.com/guides/bf/showimage/12027/

And they fly more boldly, like a wasp instead of a moth. If that makes sense.

Thank you Seedfork for the link. I believe I may have seen the moth before. Though, not very often. Nola, so they behave like a wasp. Are they any bigger than the wasp? As I remember vaguely, they were not very big. I haven't planted squash before. But not too far from my garden, our neighborhood has a small community garden. There, where the community garden is, my good neighbors planted squash yearly. I think they practice rotating crops around, but the garden is quite small, I don't know if the rotation (as far as distance) was adequate to help prevent these pests from returning.

I do get this different type of 'clearwing moth' They don't seem to cause any damage in my ornamental planting very much, and I enjoy butterflies garden beside trying to plant some veggies. (be right back with a photo of the clearwing moth metioned above).

Here is the picture;

That looks like a hummingbird moth. A good guy.

My bolt of tulle arrived yesterday, and tomorrow I plan to cover the few squash plants the yard man didn't mow down, and then the few tomato plants, hoping to avoid the brown marmorated stink bugs that have destroyed my tomatoes for the last 3 years.

I hope I'm not too late, but our season here is also late, so I'm hopeful

Hope it works out for you!

What I think is that the males are quiet a bit diferen from the females causing a lot of the confusion about what is hurting our plants..Just my opinion

Thanks Rita for the confirmation of the good guy. ^_^

I just now pulled that second of the dead looking squash. I cut open the stem and no live borers but you could see all the borer damage. My theory is that the Spinosad injections did in the borer but that it was simply too late with too much damage for the plant to recover.

Found signs of frass in two of my other plants. Just a very little. I had injected them all but I went and injected those two again.

Meanwhile the plants are pumping out the fruit. Hurray!

Interesting about the squash and the SVB. I cut a leaf way back at the stem that looked damaged. Found a totally disintegrated rotting borer in there. Yeck. But dead is good. Then on another damaged leaf stem way back by the main stem I again found a borer. Live and trying to get into the main stem. Not very big. Pulled it out and killed it. Then flushed out the area with a spinosad injection.

What I have really just learned is that if you look very, very carefully you can sometimes see the entrance hole the borer makes in one of the leaf stems. Then it travels down inside to the main stem. I just found one like that just now. Saw the hole, cut the leaf stem and sure enough, there was a live and very small borer. It was way up in the stem. It is dead now!

I think I finially might have found an egg and destroyed it. I always look but never see them.

Found this place selling SVB moth traps. I never realised there was such a thing. They claim these are very effective. Scroll down the page, they sell lots of organic desease controls also. If anyone has ever tried the traps, I am sure we would all like to know how well it all worked.

http://www.hollandsgiants.com/grow.html

http://www.hollandsgiants.com/squashVineBorerTraps.html

Here is where they talk abouit the borer moths and the traps.

The talk about SVB really discouraged me from growing squash, and zuc. I almost pick up a package of zuc. at the store yesterday. But then, I decided not to.

Zucchini and squash give you so much fruit that I hate to see anyone give up and not even plant them. Not everyone gets SVB.

If you like zukes, Lily, plant them. Get them in as soon as it's warm enough, and you'll at least get some before the SVB arrives.

Of course, you may not get SVB at all. I never did until last year... and I don't have them this year. But I'm much more sympathetic now to all the complaints I've heard over the years now that I've watched a perfectly healthy looking plant just up and die on me.

Oh Shoot. I just saw a DVB moth today and I wasn't able to catch and squish her. Before this I had not seen a moth in weeks. And I was thinking SVB season was over here. Aparently not so. Bummer.

Yugg! Found a squash vine borer worm in a small zucchini today. Say on the stem of a leaf were there was frass and the zucchini fruit directly next to the stem had a hole in it. So for some reason it could not get into the leaf. I cut the fruit and cut it open. Found a tunnel drilled and then the borer which I squished. Obviously I threw away the zucchini.

Okay ladies and gents. What type of bugs that tunelling into a flower, a curcumbit flower, and deforms the flower at the juncture of the petiole? I should have taken a pic. but I was concern enough, so I picked the flower and destroyed it before it spread internally inside the vine. Those bugs are bugging me!

I think you have pickle worms, I had to battle them this year also.

Yes, probably pickleworm. They'll attack any cucurbit, any part, but they especially love the fruit.

Sanitation isn't a concern here since they can't overwinter in our zone; they do in parts of Florida and Texas. They come fly up north every year and arrive here about mid July.

So you can compost any damaged plant material.