Can I save my cukes & zucchini? They've got WORMS!

After TS Christobal came through I noticed my Armenian cukes looked wilted at the tips. At first I thought the winds had broken them - but we didn't get much wind. When I harvested my latest cukes from my dual-purpose cukes I noticed they had some holes with white mush in them. I began exploring the vines & found 1 cm pale yellow-green worms with tiny brown banding & little hard gelantinous piles of eggs on undersides of cuke leaves on both kinds of vines. I cut out all the wilted vines about 12 inches back from wilt & smooshed all the worms I could find. Scraped the eggs wherever I found them & sprayed with a couple T Dawn detergent in a quart of water. This seems to have burned some of the leaves but the worms didn't like it (close satisfying scrutiny). I also found some rot at the ends of my zukes - I cut into that & found larger lime green grub-like things - which I smushed & hit the zukes with detergent water. What do I do now? My Armenian cukes look terible in 3 days time & my dual purpose cuke's fruits are being drilled to smoosh. Do I give up? Replant? I am in Wilmington, NC, so I think the season may be long enough to replant but this is so disheartening. Any advice would be appreciated.

They're probably not worms, they're most likely caterpillars of some sort. You could try applying Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), it's a bacteria that will take care of caterpillars but won't hurt you or any non-caterpillar insects.

Sounds like you have pickleworms, stormygace. They will normally be appearing about now in your area (moving up from Fla, usually). Once they are inside the cukes and zukes there is nothing you can do. Dusting or spraying with Bt will help but methinks the best you could do would be to cover your crops with row cover so the adult moth won't lay eggs on your plants.

You'll have to remember to remove the row cover during the day so the flowers will get pollinated, replacing it at night when the moth is active.

If you can hold out normally the moths are only active for a few weeks then disappear. (wonder where they go!?)

Hope you have success.

Shoe

You got it Shoe - that's what they are! I posted in the beginner vegetable gardening area & kind FarmerDill posted pics that exactly match what I've got. Jerked out the cukes today (broke my heart b/c I got 6 of the crispiest 8 inch long cukes before the worms infected them). I think I may plant again in second week of August - & use the cover suggestion.
Today was just too wormy in the garden. Like earthworms, can't appreciate great horned green caterpillars munching on my maters or black=headed green-yellow wrigglers that act like they might bite...me in the beans. Ugh, give me parasitic wasps, cow ants, praying mantises, ladybugs, bumble & honeybees any day. BTW haven't seen a single honeybee in the garden all summer. Not good.

Glad you nailed down the problem bugs/worms! Fortunately I haven't had them yet here, knock on wood, but have to deal with cuke beetles and squash bugs constantly!

If you like, to get you a good headstart on your August planting you could go ahead and sow some seeds in cell packs or the like and come August they'll be ready to set out; that'll give you good active plant growth immediately and not have to wait for them to germinate in the soil and at the mercy of the rains/temps.

Hope ya'll are surviving the rains down your way. I love that area!

Best,
Shoe