Squash are the winners of bad bug attraction. Next is sweetcorn [corn root worm beetles]. After that are cucumber beetles on cukes and cantaloupes. Then beetles on late green beans.

While I've been sitting here drooling over the mail order catalogs and trying to plan my gardens for next year, I can't help think wonder about the squash bugs. I have grown yellow squash and zuchinni for about 3 years now and each year the crop declines and the vines turn to mush. I was finally told about the squash borer bugs.

How do you control them? I'm about ready to skip them this year and try something else.

I'm trying a two pronged approach this year. I've found zucchini that don't need a pollinator so I can make a nice covered frame to house those babies in and hope I can get some squash. For the other squash types, I'm going to trying using Surround WP. It's a kaolin clay product that is mixed with water and sprayed on the crop to create an environment the bugs don't like. It's not a pesticide and is ok to use if you're organic. I'm also gonna to try this approach with my cucumbers.

If this doesn't work, then I may not be eating squash anymore because I'm not buying it at the stores anymore.

Squash bugs and pickleworms destroyed every last thing that I had hoped to get out of the garden. The squash looked great, but if you turned them over there would be that dredded hole and a pickle worm inside. The squash bugs are relentless as well.

The squash vine borer is the most destructive and probably the best solution to those is floating row covers. Although that is a fair amount of extra effort depending upon scale of your garden.

The cucumber beetles and squash bugs just really slow down a plant and if they strike hard enough can kill the plant. In my video there are some organic controls for both.

Here is a link that might be useful: How to deal with squash bugs