August 5, 2013

The Green Pinky: Attack of the Squash Bugs

As stated at the beginning of my Green Pinky Series, I am a rookie when it comes to gardening and continue to learn from one season to the next. The whole point of sharing my knowledge is so that you can learn from my mistakes as well.

Two weeks ago I was excited to see that our pumpkins had started to fruit! They were looking healthy and were still growing at a steady rate.

Last week, about Tuesday, I walked out to the garden to see that a few of our pumpkins vines were wilting pretty badly and that something had killed a cucumber vine completely off. I thought to myself… well I haven’t watered this week so maybe everything needs a little soak.

On Friday evening I was looking through the zucchini to harvest anything there when I spotted what I thought were stink bugs. I thought to myself, well that's a little weird but didn’t really think it was anything to be really worried about.

…. Ha ….

There was my mistake.

On Sunday, I noticed more vines were dying and any pumpkins that had started to fruit were becoming mush. I looked on the underside of the leaves and sure enough little clusters of orange eggs were there. I told my husband to grab some insecticide and spray while I figured out what was eating our plants.

Sure enough… those “stink bugs” I saw were really Squash bugs. The picture was exactly what I saw and the orange eggs were spot on.

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Squash bugs bite into the vines and inject a poison which wilts the leaves and kills the plants.

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As {G} sprayed the squash bugs came out of the wood work. So many of them running for the hills!

I think we are too late. You can see the wilt in this picture. So sad.

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We decided to spray everything to cover our bases. Some more cucumbers are starting to die off but I’m okay with that since I feel I have gotten what I’ve wanted out of them for the season. Now the pumpkins upset me since they were doing so well.

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Cucumber starting to wilt…

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One pumpkin that was growing pretty well … So disappointing 

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What I have learned:

Squash Bugs will suck the life out of your plants. Even if plants are looking healthy and getting along well you should take necessary precautions to protect them. For those that are more on the organic side using netting can help prevent squash bug infestations. For people like me that are okay with pesticides and herbicides, spray preventative substances before signs of pest take a hold of your crop.

We are already making sure that we cover our bases on the watermelon. This one below is our biggest yet!

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Here are my cucumbers!

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I made pickles with half of the cucumbers and plan to pickle the rest!

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YUM!

Hopefully you are now aware of squash bugs and can take the steps to insure that your crop makes it through the season.

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