Foiling (and Oiling) Squash Vine Borers

Around here, pumpkins are all about the seeds. I do believe that my husband's family has a genetic predisposition to pumpkin seed addiction. His one request for this years garden was "Lots of pumpkins, please!" (He actually means, "Lots of pumpkin seeds, please!")

Lots of pumpkins is much easier said than done around here though, for those of us who are committed to growing our food organically. The dreaded Squash Vine Borer is much alive and very actively looking for any young squash plant to bore into and suck the life out of. In the past I've given up on growing anything but zucchini which fruits quickly and I can get a half decent crop from before the plants wither up and die from becoming a nursery to squash vine borer larva.  (The traditional Zucchini monster does not exist in my garden, I feel lucky if I get five or six young squashes off a plant before it dies.)

I planted Terry's pumpkins this spring and then went on a search for ways to prevent  squash vine borer infestation. Over all, what I found was not hopeful. The general consensus seems to be that squash vine borers are going to do their thing no matter how hard you try to stop them.

Oh, you can use floating row covers, but then you have to hand pollinate each blossom.

You can watch and wait until you see the plants starting to wilt and a sawdust like substance coming from the base of the stem, then do surgery:  split the stem, find and kill the borer, then cover the stem with dirt, water well and hope for the best. In my experience this just makes for a prolonged miserable death.

Then there is the contradictory information--some people say to plant your squash and pumpkins early so they are large by the time the borers start laying there eggs. (They start to lay in late June on plants that are just getting ready to vine.) Others say, plant them late so that they don't vine until after the borers lay their eggs.

Some sources suggest using BT (an insecticide approved for organic use) and other sources say that it is complete ineffective.

Besides using pesticides I only found a couple of suggestions that actually seem like they might be helpful. One  site suggested laying aluminium foil around the base of the plant "to confuse the moths that are laying the eggs." I'm not exactly sure how foil will confuse the moths, but when I mentioned this to my husband he suggested wrapping the foil around the stems, as a barrier. Another site suggested rubbing the stems with oil once a week during egg laying and hatching season. The oil would coat the eggs and young larva and cause them to smother. Then finally another site suggested picking the eggs off the plants.

So that is how I spent my evening--foiling, oiling, and picking squash vine borer eggs off of my two dozen hills of squash and pumpkin plants.

The eggs were actually very easy to see and easy to pick off, so I am wondering if, as long as I am diligent about it, if that would be an effective method of controlling the squash vine borers. I'm also not sure if I've already gotten too late of a start with the borers. I thinned my hills and several of the plants I pulled up looked like they had holes drilled into them, but when I split them open, I did not see any larva.

For pictures of squash vine borer larva and eggs click here.

For pictures of the moth that lays the eggs, click here.

Like I said, around here pumpkins are all about the seeds. I did my research last winter and ended up ordering three varieties that seemed like they would fit the bill for seed pumpkins.

Baby Bear is a cute little pie pumpkin with semi hulless seeds. I always buy some pie pumpkins for fall decorations then use cook up the flesh for pumpkin bread, so the semi hulless seeds are a nice perk.

Speckled Hound looks more like a squash, but was the most productive pumpkin with the least seeds per pound. Eight fruits per plant with big seeds sounded hard to beat.

Kakai isn't the prettiest or most productive pumpkin in the world, but its seeds are completely hulless. That gets it a trial run in my garden.

The seeds in the above photo that aren't on a packet are from a batch of raw seeds that husband bought to roast. They were uniform and large, so we are planting a few hills of them as well. They will be our mystery pumpkin.

Do any of my readers have tried and true ways of dealing with squash vine borers?

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