Squash Bug & Cucumber Beetle Alert

11 years ago

This is y'all's "prepare for battle" warning.

Yesterday I committed mass murder, ending the lives of 5 squash bugs and 2 cucumber beetles. It seems too early here for squash bugs, but we do always have cucumber beetles this early.

I have 3 cucumber plants in one pot and 3 squash plants in another. I'm not really growing them for the purpose of having cucumbers and squash as they are in pots too small for 3 plants of their type. Their purpose is to serve as trap crops to catch the early squash bugs so I can find them and kill them before they find and kill my actual squash crop (which isn't even planted yet, though I have some small squash and melon plants growing in paper cups and ready to go into the garden if it ever stops raining). Yesterday I placed the two containers squarely in the middle of the garden's main path so I'd have to pass by them constantly and keep an eye out for pests. As soon as I saw the pests on these plants, I killed the pests.

I don't know how much farther behind us the rest of you are further north in terms of the emergence or appearance of garden pests, but I thought I'd mention they already are here so you can be watching for them to arrive there.

Dawn

Featured Answer

chickencoupe

11 years ago

When the rain stops I'll be starting some under row covers. Look out stuffed zucchini ! *sniff

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Comments (8)

mksmth zone 7a Tulsa Oklahoma
11 years ago
i so want to plant squash but I really really dont want to fight with the bugs. I really thought last year having a brand new garden that hadnt been used in years nor as far as i know has another garden any where near, that i would sneak a few plants in before they found them. Nope. The second my squash popped up the bugs found them. Sometimes its just not worth the fight.

but you know what. I will probably plant some squash and watch them get eaten again.

mike
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
11 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
Every now and then I have a year with no squash bugs at all. The last year like that here may have been 2011. I have no idea why they don't find us some years because they do show up most years.

I hate squash bugs but I'll try to control them for at least a while so we can harvest and eat squash. Once I have lots of squash in the freezer, I tend to just let the plants die. There's only so much time available in the summer, and I have lots of other ways to spend my time that do not involve scouting the underside of every squash leaf for squash bug eggs. Maybe someone with a smaller garden has the time and patience to do that, but I don't.

Some years I grow the plants under floating row cover and some years I don't. The row cover will help protect the plants from pests, but I still have to lift it and hand-pollinate the blossoms and while a gardener is doing that, the squash bugs and squash vine borers can sneak onto the plants.

I love summer squash, but the constant onslaught of squash bugs and squash vine borers can make it very challenging to get a good harvest.

I do grow some C. moschata summer squash varieties with excellent tolerance of/resistance to squash vine borers, but the squash bugs attack those plants as much as they attack the others. One advantage of the C. moschata squash varieties is that they grow so rampantly they often can outgrow the diseases spread by the squash bugs.
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wulfletons
11 years ago
Ugh. I just walked by the squash plants at the nursery and had a little anxiety attack remembering all the squash bugs last year. I'm afraid I will be buying my squash at the farmers market this year...I'm not up for another battle just yet!
kfrinkle
11 years ago
I don't even have any plants in the ground capable of being murdered by these pests... *sigh*
Lisa_H OK
11 years ago
I haven't even put any squash seeds in the ground yet. I have no idea where I could even put it...I planted tomatoes in last year's spot.
luvncannin
11 years ago
yay Bon for hoops!
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
11 years ago
I am pretty sure the squash bugs found us the very first year, likely because there are some native, weedy squash or gourds that grow in the wild here so the squash bugs were here before we were here.

I don't remember having trouble with them in Fort Worth or in my brother's garden one county south of Fort Worth. Maybe we were just lucky.