Hi Actionclaw,

In my years of battling SVB, here are some of my observations:

* Since I have read they lay eggs and start at the base, I usually heavily mulch my base so they cant get to it. Before I mulch the base, I inspects carefully for eggs and remove them. They are tricky and lay eggs under the leaf stems too, so checking with a small mirror helps here. But in my experience if they really lay eggs anywhere. I have seen eggs on top of leaves, on the tips of vines, on flower stalks, and under vines too. You have to check the vine very carefully. On pumpkins I will check vines and them bury the vines are they grow, with dirt.

* I have found no pattern to which direction they bore, But I think most seem to be going towards the base.

* On bush type summer squash I will inject as preventative, and I have found that pretty effective. I'm in Texas and we pretty much have SVB active from May to Sept, and I have certainly been able to extend the life of the bush type squashes by injecting. Vining types such as spaghetti squash, pumpkins, etc, for these I bury the vines as they grow. BT injections are just not practical because the vines are so long, and there are so many growing vine tips that fork out of the plant.

But since the plants grow fast and root along the vines readily, even if the base gets taken out the plant will still live and produce. Here's my banana squash harvest! Another key here was getting an early start, so that the plants were big and strong once the SVB started.