TIL about squash vine borers & had to perform surgery on my plants
TIL about squash vine borers & had to perform surgery on my plants
Are your squash plants suddenly struggling? It could be the work of a squash vine borer. Here are tips on how to identify, control, and get rid of the squash vine borer!
After having a fantastic squash harvest 2 years ago, last year kind of sucked, and we never figured out why. This year things started great, but then started going south, with plants yellowing and squash wilting. Well apparently there's these asshole moths who lay eggs on the stem, which then produce these little effers that bore into the stem itself and eat the plant from the inside. Cutting into the stems I was able to find and remove a bunch of them. Cutting the stems didn't feel great... I tried to cut along the grain, but had to pretty much cut a chunk out of every plant just so I could even see inside and prod enough to find the squiggly things.
Hoping the plants survive and thrive 🤞. Apparently next year I should get a syringe and inject them with something called BT. I had no idea raising squash required a medical degree 🩺
They did surgery on a grape?! 😳
I think a solution is to do crop rotation. By planting the squash in a totally different/ opposite location and also removing all traces of dead squash vines, the caterpillars won't survive the winter and won't be abundant enough to cause harm the next year.
They got our two spaghetti squash this year in Northern Alabama. :c
I was (I thought) very vigilant in checking numerous times a day, and squished dozens of eggs, but a couple slipped by and got into the basal stems of each of our plants. The plants deteriorated quickly. We just took them out this week.
Interestingly, they haven't seemed to touch any of our 6 zucchini plants. 🤞
Hopefully they don't! They hit most of our zucchini
They took out all of my zucchini and one of my cucumber plants this year.
☹️ I'm sorry to hear that. 2 of my plants seen to be gonners, but the rest seen to be recovering 🤞