My new strategy this year is to start seeds indoors for a 2nd round of planting. I let the originals do their thing and produce until they started to die, and then I pulled them, replacing them with the new starts.
Nice video! I've done squash surgery like you demonstrated in years past and it works fairly well sometimes. I mound dirt over the damaged stem after removing the grubs. But this year I used the last tip you mentioned. I waited until the middle of July to plant squash and my zucchini looks great! No vine borers! I'm very happy about that. I'm just going to make it a habit to plant squash later and avoid the vine borers altogether.
This is a really, really good video. I have never seen a pest extraction like this before. I was thinking about your foil defense method. How about spraying the stems with some sort of water based, organic paint? Like a pruning paint... I did this to prevent ambrosia borers in fruit my trees and it works well. This way they can't get under like the foil Keep up the good work!
I’ve never tried that but that could work. As long as you spray it before it gets infected and you have a cut in the main stem. If you try it, hope it works out great for you! Happy gardening, and thanks for the support 🙂
Wrapping the stems do not work for my garden unfortunately, they just lay it everywhere else. I pre-spray and pre-inject BT, I’ve used insecticide dust Diatomaceous earth, essential oils, sprinkling cinnamon and pepper, companion planting, wrapping, covering, even resorted to real insecticide, have borer lures in traps set up, put yellow bowls out, tried growing moschata variety, done surgery, they literally lay dozens of eggs a day and the life cycle never breaks here in the NE. They’re active from May-Sept! They are the bane of my gardening existence!!! I’m about to give up on squash, 😢
You may just need to not plant squash in your garden for a few years. It will break their egg laying cycle and then you can try again and try to take care of the larva before they develop and restart the whole process. I’m sorry to hear you are going through that 😔
@@BeebeSeedCo. Never had these problems on my farm just chickens ducks and geese but i grew there with little problems. Old now and here in the city I have tried all these things even leaving it for 4 years I have spotted squash, striped cucumber and some slightly smaller black beetles?? and Also vine borers, planted late grow mint around them cinnamon cloves garlic too but I am lucky to get a few cucumbers and no squash but dead plants always now. First year here I got lots of cucumbers and could make pickles too and some good storage squash, but now no way sadly. Oh well chickens and duck needed here in this city but illegal I guess. Thank you this was a very good video I enjoyed it.
I've found they lay on the leaves more often than on the stems. If they hatch, they burrow in where the leaf meets the stem and then crawl down the leaf stem, ultimately ending up in the joints or main vine. I look at the top of the leaves and pick off anything that looks like a red dot - the eggs don't stick to the leaves they just kind of sit on top, so you can wet a Qtip and just poke them to pick them off. If you are growing longer vines (like squash instead of zucchini), mounding the plant joints helps (even without borers), because the plant will naturally grow more roots. If the local large farms here all go big on squash though we know it's going to be rough the next year or two no matter what. Honestly maybe just plant something else in that situation. Same here on the life cycle - there's never a time when you are finally safe. It's still better to wait until at least mid-June because there are less of them, but they seem to lay all through September even.
I don't plant anything but resistant varieties of Cucurbita moschata and Cucurbita argyrosperma (butternuts and cushaws.) You can use these for summer squash as well although they've been bred to be winter squash.
@@thomas2782 An excellent suggestion for southern areas (like mine) with multiple generations(2+?) of squash vine borer - naturally resistant moschata vines with fruit selected for summer squash characteristics - not compact vines though
You never mentioned injecting the stems with BT. This year the vine bores came down the leave stems as I had the main stems buried. I'll try injecting with BT as many other YT greats say this is the best method.
Yes I thought about that method before creating the video but decided to keep it out because I’ve personally never tried it and there are a lot of other RUclipsrs out there who know more about it with videos on the topic.
Yeah those are horrible to deal with. About the only way to prevent them is butterfly netting and making sure there is no way for them to land on your plants and lay their eggs. Hope all goes well and thanks for watching! beebeseeds.com
My new strategy this year is to start seeds indoors for a 2nd round of planting. I let the originals do their thing and produce until they started to die, and then I pulled them, replacing them with the new starts.
Nice video! I've done squash surgery like you demonstrated in years past and it works fairly well sometimes. I mound dirt over the damaged stem after removing the grubs. But this year I used the last tip you mentioned. I waited until the middle of July to plant squash and my zucchini looks great! No vine borers! I'm very happy about that. I'm just going to make it a habit to plant squash later and avoid the vine borers altogether.
covering the squash with mesh works as well
This is a really, really good video. I have never seen a pest extraction like this before.
I was thinking about your foil defense method. How about spraying the stems with some sort of water based, organic paint? Like a pruning paint... I did this to prevent ambrosia borers in fruit my trees and it works well. This way they can't get under like the foil
Keep up the good work!
I’ve never tried that but that could work. As long as you spray it before it gets infected and you have a cut in the main stem. If you try it, hope it works out great for you!
Happy gardening, and thanks for the support 🙂
Wrapping the stems do not work for my garden unfortunately, they just lay it everywhere else. I pre-spray and pre-inject BT, I’ve used insecticide dust Diatomaceous earth, essential oils, sprinkling cinnamon and pepper, companion planting, wrapping, covering, even resorted to real insecticide, have borer lures in traps set up, put yellow bowls out, tried growing moschata variety, done surgery, they literally lay dozens of eggs a day and the life cycle never breaks here in the NE. They’re active from May-Sept! They are the bane of my gardening existence!!! I’m about to give up on squash, 😢
They also make their way into my greenhouse and overwintering in the soil. Nothing I’ve tried works more than 10%!
You may just need to not plant squash in your garden for a few years. It will break their egg laying cycle and then you can try again and try to take care of the larva before they develop and restart the whole process. I’m sorry to hear you are going through that 😔
@@BeebeSeedCo. Never had these problems on my farm just chickens ducks and geese but i grew there with little problems. Old now and here in the city I have tried all these things even leaving it for 4 years I have spotted squash, striped cucumber and some slightly smaller black beetles?? and Also vine borers, planted late grow mint around them cinnamon cloves garlic too but I am lucky to get a few cucumbers and no squash but dead plants always now. First year here I got lots of cucumbers and could make pickles too and some good storage squash, but now no way sadly. Oh well chickens and duck needed here in this city but illegal I guess. Thank you this was a very good video I enjoyed it.
I've found they lay on the leaves more often than on the stems. If they hatch, they burrow in where the leaf meets the stem and then crawl down the leaf stem, ultimately ending up in the joints or main vine. I look at the top of the leaves and pick off anything that looks like a red dot - the eggs don't stick to the leaves they just kind of sit on top, so you can wet a Qtip and just poke them to pick them off. If you are growing longer vines (like squash instead of zucchini), mounding the plant joints helps (even without borers), because the plant will naturally grow more roots.
If the local large farms here all go big on squash though we know it's going to be rough the next year or two no matter what. Honestly maybe just plant something else in that situation. Same here on the life cycle - there's never a time when you are finally safe. It's still better to wait until at least mid-June because there are less of them, but they seem to lay all through September even.
I don't plant anything but resistant varieties of Cucurbita moschata and Cucurbita argyrosperma (butternuts and cushaws.) You can use these for summer squash as well although they've been bred to be winter squash.
That’s smart! Great tip 🙂
Try a Tromboncino squash... when young they can be used like zucchini, and when ripe, they are like butternut, it's a moschata family
@@thomas2782 An excellent suggestion for southern areas (like mine) with multiple generations(2+?) of squash vine borer - naturally resistant moschata vines with fruit selected for summer squash characteristics - not compact vines though
You never mentioned injecting the stems with BT. This year the vine bores came down the leave stems as I had the main stems buried. I'll try injecting with BT as many other YT greats say this is the best method.
Yes I thought about that method before creating the video but decided to keep it out because I’ve personally never tried it and there are a lot of other RUclipsrs out there who know more about it with videos on the topic.
I need to figure out how to get rid of squash.
Thank goodness I don’t have these bugs but I do have squash bugs and cabbage moth butterflies and they are terrible creatures you can’t get rid of.
Yeah those are horrible to deal with. About the only way to prevent them is butterfly netting and making sure there is no way for them to land on your plants and lay their eggs. Hope all goes well and thanks for watching! beebeseeds.com
I bet you would grow some awesome cannabis plants 😅