Squash bugs - how do you get rid of them?

Hello,

I am an utter neophyte gardener who bought a gorgeous little horse farm in central North Carolina that happens to also have a huge garden (55 raised beds in a beautifully fenced area to keep the deer out). During this first summer here, we planted all of the standard newbie vegetables and flowers, some from seed, some purchased, etc.

By the time our squash plants started flowering, we realized that we had a squash bug problem after just a little research. They destroyed all squash, then pumpkins, them moved on to the melons in that order. We tried everything we read about - insecticidal soaps (trying to stay organic), then moved on to chemicals, all the while systematically picking them off and throwing them in buckets of water with soap on a daily basis. We had to give up after a week long vacation that sealed our doom as well as that of our pretty pumpkins we were hoping to grow for our son's school.

We have read that these bugs can winter over in our climate, so my question is - what can we do to get rid of these so we don't have the same problem next year? Please tell me there is something we can do . . .

Thank you!

This forum is for question relating to adding data to the BugFiles database.

We have a forum on Garden Pests and Diseases here: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/pad/all/
and if you post your question there, you may get some help,

Kennedy
BugFiles Administrator