I would probably say your affected plants have Blossom End rot. Blossom End rot is a calcium deficiency in your plants from lack of calcium from the soil. There are two main ways to treat this: 1: Get a calcium leaf spray to spray on your leaves, or 2: Lime your soil as close as you can get to your plants without harming them

There are other, alternative methods, but these two (choose only one) are recommended.

Please, if possible, post a few pictures of the squash developing on your plants to confirm this. Try to get a few pictures of the bugs you talked about while your at it. The bugs probably won't harm your plants, but may be.

A couple notes...

1. What is the brand name of this calcium and where can I buy it in Central florida (ie big box stores, etc)
2. Had a couple of squash that were pickable... brought them in and noticed a hole and a fire ant crawling out of it. I cut into the squash and found a juicy little green worm. I assume the fire ant was after the worm. What is this worm? I have tried BT and have had great success in other parts of the garden. Do I just need to let Sevin settle this? Also what is the protocol when dealing with these worms? Do I just remove all fruit that has holes in it?

Thanks In advance

Joe

I've noticed that I usually get some squash and zucchini that suffer some from blossom end rot. It is due to calcium deficiency but that calcium deficiency may or may not actually exist in the soil. If the plants experienced some sort of stress or grew too quick, the roots may not have been able to get enough calcium to those developing fruits quick enough for them to develop properly. Once a fruit shows signs of end rot, it won't recover so you might as well remove it. Plants can sometimes grow out of an end rot problem if it was due to overly fast growth.

I've seen blossom end rot spray at lowes or home depot though anything that you can spray on the plant that has calcium and won't hurt the plant should do. Other tricks I've seen people do is crushing up some tums around the base of a plant but calcium is usually slow to assimilate into soil which is why lime is usually applied before planting.

I would cut off any fruit that is showing signs of rot or bug holes so the plants can get on with producing more good fruits and hopefully you can get your share. And if you really need a squash or zucchini fix and the bugs have got all yours, I'll probably have it comming out my ears by tomorrow since my plants are producing heavily and the main problems I see are powdery mildew which seems to only slow the plants down a little. I've already frozen a bunch and made pickles with some more and been giving away lots.