Introdution
For squash lovers, the most prolific threat that we face (at least in my neck of the woods) comes from that most hated enemy: the
squash bug. Related to, but smaller than the stink bug, they are difficult to control for two reasons; first, the mature adults are extremely resilient to all but the most insidious pesticides, second, they breed like rats, with one adult female able to produce multiple generations in a growing season.
Taking a cue from the venerable Sun Tzu, after spending years locked in mortal combat with these nefarious creatures, I've decided to collate all of the experiences and techniques that I have employed over the years in the hopes of helping others in their struggle against our common foe. Many of the methods that I will detail here I learned from reading
similar stories online, and I am very grateful for the efforts of those
who came before me.
Please note that this is a guide to keeping squash bugs in check, and at bay. It is virtually impossible to eliminate them completely, unless you are extremely lucky, and also happen to live many miles from where any other squash plants or suitable food source are grown. As the Romans did with the northern barbarians for so many centuries, what is important is that you keep the population in check, and at bay. When you neglect to do so, you to will find your garden empire overrun with the Vandals, Huns, Franks and Goths as I did two seasons ago.
The methods laid out in this guide are intended for those with small to medium sized plots of squash plants. I personally plant 80-100 plants per year (combined summer and winter varieties), usually covering an area of 2500-3000 square feet. Where the cutoff lies depends on the amount of time and effort that you want/are able to invest.
Laying Plans
The first steps do not take place in the late spring when the encroaching armies appear, but in the fall, after the harvest and before the snows. Adult squash bugs will overwinter close to their feeding grounds, emerging in (late, in my area) spring and taking to the air seeking out your squash plants. Once they have found them, they will infest them as both a feeding and nesting ground; mating, laying eggs (more about that later) and feeding, continuing to repeat the process all season long.
The winter of 2011-12 was very mild up here and I'm sure this helped contribute to the population explosion we experienced, but you should try to remove any potential wintering places such as stones, leaves, or pieces of debris. Living in New England I know that you can't swing a dead cow without hitting stones and boulders, so just do the best that you can with those items. It is also very important to dig up any remnants of your squash plants and dispose of them. Some folks choose to compost them, but I prefer the scorched earth approach - start a fire and burn baby burn.
Terrain
Once you have cleared your plots of all plant remnants from the season,
till your soil very well. This is a very important step as it will turn
any remaining smaller debris into the soil, as well as expose the squash bugs (and any other nasty
critters) to predation. Tilling also break up any weeds or grass
that gave taken root and prevents them from hardening during the winter and becoming a problem for you during spring preparations.
As with all crops, crop rotation is always recommended. I have a three year rotation setup but not everyone has this luxury, and even in my situation, its not as if my planting areas are separated by acres of space. Again, just do the best that you can. For smaller gardens, it's a nice to, not a must have.
Maneuvering
One suggestion that I've read is to plant "squash hub-resistant" varieties of winter and summer squash. Butternut and zucchini are supposedly less appetizing to squash bugs but I've planted both of them every year for at least seven years now, and even with other varieties available on which to dine, they still end up infested, albeit to a lesser degree than pumpkin, buttercup, delicata and summer squash. Therefore, plant what you really want to eat, and prepare for battle.
Others have suggested spraying with Neem Oil (plant-derived organic insecticide) or other insecticides, organic or otherwise. I have not tried it, but I've ready many reports that while insecticides do seem to help with
hatchlings and juveniles, nothing but the big chemical guns will work on the adults, and its the adults that are the biggest problem. The adults are the producers of additional generations and if you can wipe them out as they appear, before they breed, you will be able to enjoy your squash harvest like never before.
Tactical Dispositions
Whether you direct sow or transplant,
do not mulch your squash plants (there is one exception which I will get to later.) The mulch provides a perfect sheltering place for the squash bugs where they will hide and mate when not feeding or laying eggs. Instead of mulch, lay down three boards in a triangular pattern around the young plants after they emerge/you transplant. Any boards will do; leftover 2x4 pieces, 1x pine boards from your local lumber yard's cull pile, cedar shingles, etc. The boards make a serviceable substitute for true mulch, but more importantly, the stink bugs will flock to the underside of the boards as a seemingly perfect shelter; unaware that each morning and evening, you will turn over the boards looking for them.
When you find them, you can dispatch them in any manner you desire. I prefer the "squash the squash bug" approach (yeah, they stink a bit; big whoop, wanna fight about it?) and carry two flat stones with me for this purpose. Even though they can fly, the bugs will not try to escape; at worst, the will crawl around to the other side of the board. It really is almost too easy . . . almost. One of the funniest things you will see is how they act when you catch them in flagrante delicato. They apparently do this butt to butt, and watching them try to crawl away in two directions is cartoonishly comical. After dispatching your prey, replace the boards. Rinse, repeat.
Once you have checked under the board traps at a given planting site, you should also check the underside of the squash plant leaves for clutches of
eggs. They are usually laid near the stem of the larger leaves, and range in color from yellow to rust red to brown. You can crush them in place but it is easy to miss some or knock them to the ground where they can still survive and hatch. You can also gently cut or tear away the section of the leaf to which they are adhered but you risk destroying the entire leaf if you are no careful. Other suggest using duck tape to pull them off while leaving the lead intact; sound feasible but I've never tried it. I simply carry around a wide mouth plastic or glass container of soapy water and rub them off of the leaves into the mixture to die. However you choose to deal with them, treat them like Anikan Skywalker treated the Jedi Younglings during the attack on the Jedi Temple. No mercy!
Now this all might seem like a lot of work, but trust me, it is worth it. Last year I noticed the arrival of the adults in mid June and began this twice daily regimen. It was working so well (sometimes more than twenty kills in a day) that I decided to start logging results. They were as listed below. Note, a -- means that I did not make a sweep for that time slot.
| Date |
07-01 |
07-02 |
07-03 |
07-04 |
07-05 |
07-06 |
07-07 |
Weekly Totals |
| AM Adults |
5 |
– |
– |
13 |
– |
– |
9 |
27 |
| PM Adults |
6 |
7 |
– |
4 |
3 |
22 |
7 |
49 |
| AM Egg Clutches |
1 |
– |
– |
0 |
– |
– |
1 |
2 |
| PM Egg Clutches |
0 |
0 |
– |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Date |
07-08 |
07-09 |
07-10 |
07-11 |
07-12 |
07-13 |
07-14 |
|
| AM Adults |
2 |
– |
– |
1 |
– |
– |
4 |
7 |
| PM Adults |
1 |
0 |
– |
2 |
– |
4 |
1 |
8 |
| AM Egg Clutches |
0 |
– |
– |
0 |
– |
– |
4 |
4 |
| PM Egg Clutches |
0 |
0 |
– |
1 |
– |
0 |
0 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Date |
07-15 |
07-16 |
07-17 |
07-18 |
07-19 |
07-20 |
07-21 |
|
| AM Adults |
4 |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
4 |
| PM Adults |
1 |
0 |
– |
0 |
– |
– |
– |
1 |
| AM Egg Clutches |
0 |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
– |
0 |
| PM Egg Clutches |
0 |
0 |
– |
0 |
– |
– |
– |
0 |
As you can see, things steadily tapered off as I kept the patrols up. I can only guesstimate that I dispatched at least 100 other adults in June before I started the log. Based on the results from 7/16-7/18, I stopped patrolling. By this time, the vining varieties of squash were getting big enough to survive moderate infestation (and more difficult to check), and coupled with the fact that I seemed to have wiped out a considerable number of the population, I felt that I had reached a good stopping point.
The fruits of my labor manifested themselves in September and October. At this point, as the plants themselves begin to wane, especially close to the original planting site, the squash bugs will gather on and under the squash fruits on the plants. Where's in the past I'd faced an enemy numbering in the hundreds, I would estimate that I only found and destroyed perhaps 30-40 adults and adolescents at most!
Building on this success, I tried one more maneuver for the first time. After picking all the remaining winter squash for winter storage, I placed the by now very large summer squash that I had hand-pollinated for seed in the middle of the squash patch, and began to slowly uproot the remains of the squash plants in an ever-shrinking circle, forcing the remaining bugs to congregate on the summer squash fruits, and each day for another week or so, I would kill two or three more. I left them out there well into December (even after I tilled) just to make sure but I never found any more.
Variation of Tactics
While the body count was tremendously satisfying, I guess the true measure of all my efforts will not be known until next season. The neighboring farm plants hundreds, if not thousands of squash plants no more than half a mile away, so it is possible that survivors in their soil could re-infest my plants when they take to the air in the spring. Temperatures this winter have been average to above average, but we did have a good week long stretch in late January where night time lows were in the single digits and even below zero. Hopefully this helped kill off many of the survivors.
I still plan to build on last year's campaign. Next season, I'm going to enact my variation of crop trapping. Traditional crop trapping entails planting a small amount of a crop similar to your main crop around and/or earlier than your main crap, encouraging pests to infest your sacrificial crop, and then attacking them in place by all means necessary. So for our purposes, you could locate summer squash near where you will be placing your butternuts, and delay the butternuts until after the infestation period of the squash bugs; then napalm the hell out of the summer squash plants with pesticides or vitamin G and a match.
Traditional trap cropping may work when you have enough acreage to plant sacrificial lambs, but for most small to medium sized gardens, space is at a premium. Also, a short growing season precludes any delay of seeding/transplanting. My wrinkle on trapping will be the selective use of floating row covers. I bought a roll of light-duty six foot wide material a couple of years ago to help deal with cabbage worms on my brassica (but that's another post), and will be using it to cover the majority of my squash plants. I will leave the summer squash uncovered, allowing them to function as the trap crop, however rather than sacrificing them, I will employ the board and twice a day patrol method I detailed above.
This will reduce the amount of patrol time, as I will only need to focus my efforts on a single row of bush squash plants. Eventually, once the squash plants begin to flower, the row covers will have to come to allow for natural pollination, unless you want to hand-pollinate everything. I do utilize hand-pollination to create pure seed for the subsequent season, but it is a bit time sensitive (and yet another post), and difficult to employ all season long, especially when you have a day job. If at that point the summer squash still show signs of infestation, I will employ the board and patrol the method on the newly uncovered plants as well.
I hope that all of the steps detailed in this post is will help my fellow squash lovers. I will report on this seasons' campaign, and would love to now if I was able to help. I would also love to know of any other methods that others have employed with success against these pests.
Farmer Bob
