Tag: squash vine borer

  • Squash Vine Borer Treatment #3 : GF Video

    Squash Vine Borer Treatment #3 : GF Video

    A new Squash Vine Borer treatment to control Squash Vine Borers and keep them from eating your squash plants. Squash Borers live inside your squash plant and eat the plant from the inside out until  you have a dead squash plant. Are your Zucchini plants dying? Summer Squash too? The culprit is likely the borer. Here’s a video how to on a new squash vine borer treatment that uses Bt.

    Many times I hear of people who walk into their vegetable garden and find all their squash plants wilting and yellowing. Check the base of the stem, where it enters the soil. If you see this orange frass that looks like wet sawdust like in the photo below, you have squash vine borers in your plants. If left untreated, there’s a good chance you will lose the squash.

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    Orange frass at base of stem, a sure sign of squash vine borer infestation

    How this squash vine borer treatment works

    In this video we are using Bt, Bacillus thuringiensis var kurstaki . This is a naturally occurring organism that, once it enters the gut of the borer, causes it to stop eating. Bt is considered an organic treatment, allowed by the OMRI ( Organic Materials Review Institute )

    The adult moth of the borer lays its eggs in the soil at the base of the squash plant, then the eggs hatch and the borer chews a hole in your squash plant, enters the stem and starts eating. The Bt is injected into the stem of the squash plant at several intervals. The goal here is to get the borer to ingest some of the Bt, so you want to inject the Bt in front of where the borer is currently chewing. Watch the video for how to do this.

    This Bt is not to be confused with GMO BT, which has been genetically spliced into plants. This is a naturally occurring organism that we are harnessing to kill caterpillars. Below are our other videos on how to prevent squash vine borers, let us know any suggestions or comments below:

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    Squash Vine Borer Treatment method #2

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    Squash Vine Borer Prevention and Treatment method #1

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    Check out our Squash Recipes Here

     

  • Squash Vine Borer Treament Prevention #1 : GF Video

    Squash Vine Borer Treament Prevention #1 : GF Video

    Squash Vine Borer eating your squash, pumpkin, and zucchini plants every year? Squash plants dying? Here’s how to prevent squash vine borers from eating your squash plants. The borer is the caterpillar of the Melittia cucurbitae moth. The moth lays eggs at the base of young squash plants, both winter squash, summer squash, and pumpkins and the eggs hatch and the caterpillar burrows into the stem of the squash plant, eating the plant from the inside out.

    How To Prevent & Protect Squash Plants with our how to video:

    There are several ways to prevent the squash vine borer from destroying your plants, I’ve heard about wrapping the stem in foil or pantyhose to confuse the moth, or placing a square of aluminum foil around the base of the young plant is said to confuse the moth. I have also seen larvae enter the squash plant farther up the stem, so using foil or stockings may or may not work. There are also commercial sprays to deter the moth.

    Borer Prevention

    Our borer prevention method we learned from our neighbor Priscilla, who can be heard on these GardenFork Radio episodes on growing heirloom tomatoes. The one good thing about Squash Vine Borers is they have only one egg cycle, so once you get your plants past the egg laying time of the moth, you can relax about your squash plants drying from squash vine borers.

    You can buy floating row fabric from Fedco Seeds Growing Supplies here.

    Check out our gardening how-to video on how to prevent Squash Vine Borers from ruining your squash plants. Let us know how you keep the borers from killing your squash plants below:

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    Squash Vine Borer Treatment method #2 Extraction

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    Squash Vine Borer Treatment #3 using Bt

  • Squash Vine Borer Treatment #2 : GF Video

    Squash Vine Borer Treatment #2 : GF Video

    The Squash Vine Borer eating the squash, pumpkin, zucchini plants? Get rid of the squash borer with this method. If you have squash borer damage on your squash, pumpkins, zucchini plants, here’s how we treat our squash plants.

    The moth of the squash vine borer lays it eggs next to the young squash plants, and the larvae then enter the plant by chewing a hole. If you see what looks like orange sawdust and a hole in  your plant, you have borers. Not good, but if you are careful and use our borer removal method, you can still grow some great squash!

    The moth that lays the vine borer eggs is a weird looking one, it looks like a cross between a moth and a ninja warrior. It has red and gray markings, here are some photos of the moth.

    There are other squash vine borer treatments, methods, ways of prevention, we cover a few of them here:

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    Squash Vine Borer Prevention and Treatment method #1
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    Squash Vine Borer Treatment #3 using Bt

    Don’t Give Up!

    Despite these squash vines looking dead, you can still get some good squash out of them, so go ahead and try. It also helps to reduce the population of squash moths. From what I’ve read, Butternut Squash are less susceptible to the borer, and summer squash like zucchini are more susceptible. I remember as a kid seeing our zucchini die every year and the presence of that orange sawdust stuff.

    squashCheck out our Squash Recipes Here

    How do you control squash vine borers? Any successful treatment you’ve used? Please let us know below: