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  • When squash bugs attack

    From Snag@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jun 26 20:01:41 2024
    One must attack back , and right quick too I mean ! I went to check
    soil moisture this afternoon and found eggs ... and then baby bugs . As
    much as I hate to use it the only thing in my arsenal that has worked is
    some old carbamate based Sevin . I did a thorough check and found and
    destroyed lots of eggs , followed by a spray on top and bottom of all
    the leaves at the recommended concentration . That knocked them down a
    few weeks ago and I haven't seen any until today .
    A question about their eggs . Some of the eggs I found today were a
    light tan color rather than the dark reddish brown . I'm wondering if
    those eggs were dead . They did seem a little crumbly when I crushed
    them ...
    This is the opening shot of Bug War 2024 , and I am readying my counterattacks ! Next wave is probably Japanese beetles , I need to get
    the attractant in the traps in the next few days before they arrive - I
    may dodge that bullet this summer since I applied beneficial nematodes
    in the early spring . Can't forget about the squash stem borers and
    hornworms ! The Sevin should take care of the former , the latter aren't usually a big problem if I keep watch for them . I need to check my Bt selection , I might have an organic solution for the hornworms .
    --
    Snag
    It's great to be straight !

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  • From songbird@21:1/5 to Snag on Thu Jun 27 06:25:15 2024
    Snag wrote:
    ...
    hornworms ! The Sevin should take care of the former , the latter aren't usually a big problem if I keep watch for them . I need to check my Bt selection , I might have an organic solution for the hornworms .

    i get out in the early morning and scan for them.
    looking for fresh droppings on the ground and then
    looking up tends to locate most of them and if i
    miss them one day i can usually find them the next.
    once in a while something must be eating them because
    after i find them and drop them on the ground cut in
    half they'll be gone the next time i'm out there. no
    idea what it is.

    last year i didn't have a single one of them that i
    recall. first time in a long time. previous year i
    had maybe 30.

    for JB's i'm trying to train the birds to eat them
    by picking them off the plant and crushing their heads
    with my fingernails and leaving them on the ground by
    the plants. either they become fertilizer or something
    eats them. i never get all of them, but i grow a lot
    of beans and a lot of the beans seem to survive and
    give fresh beans or dry beans even if some of the
    leaves are chewed up.

    with all the grass and soybean fields around here
    i'll never get rid of them and i sure would not put
    up any kind of attractant because i'd have to then
    deal with emptying buckets and buckets of them and
    having to dispose them on a regular basis. if i had
    that kind of time... it'd probably make a good
    fertilizer but you have to make sure they're dead as
    i've found out that trying to drown them even in
    soapy water that they can recover even after being
    in the water for quite some time. i was taking them
    and tossing them at the end of the driveway but a
    bit later i noticed one day that a lot of them were
    crawling away (so all my efforts at picking them
    was pretty much just moving them to another location).
    so that's when i changed my method to make sure they
    were dead and not going to come back alive.


    songbird

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  • From Snag@21:1/5 to songbird on Thu Jun 27 06:50:22 2024
    On 6/27/2024 5:25 AM, songbird wrote:
    Snag wrote:
    ...
    hornworms ! The Sevin should take care of the former , the latter aren't
    usually a big problem if I keep watch for them . I need to check my Bt
    selection , I might have an organic solution for the hornworms .

    i get out in the early morning and scan for them.
    looking for fresh droppings on the ground and then
    looking up tends to locate most of them and if i
    miss them one day i can usually find them the next.
    once in a while something must be eating them because
    after i find them and drop them on the ground cut in
    half they'll be gone the next time i'm out there. no
    idea what it is.

    last year i didn't have a single one of them that i
    recall. first time in a long time. previous year i
    had maybe 30.

    for JB's i'm trying to train the birds to eat them
    by picking them off the plant and crushing their heads
    with my fingernails and leaving them on the ground by
    the plants. either they become fertilizer or something
    eats them. i never get all of them, but i grow a lot
    of beans and a lot of the beans seem to survive and
    give fresh beans or dry beans even if some of the
    leaves are chewed up.

    with all the grass and soybean fields around here
    i'll never get rid of them and i sure would not put
    up any kind of attractant because i'd have to then
    deal with emptying buckets and buckets of them and
    having to dispose them on a regular basis. if i had
    that kind of time... it'd probably make a good
    fertilizer but you have to make sure they're dead as
    i've found out that trying to drown them even in
    soapy water that they can recover even after being
    in the water for quite some time. i was taking them
    and tossing them at the end of the driveway but a
    bit later i noticed one day that a lot of them were
    crawling away (so all my efforts at picking them
    was pretty much just moving them to another location).
    so that's when i changed my method to make sure they
    were dead and not going to come back alive.


    songbird


    I'm optimistic that the nematodes got most of them while they were
    grubs ... I also spent a lot of time in years past picking them off in
    the early mornings . I was mostly knocking them off the plants into an
    ice cream bucket with soapy water . Worked fairly well until late summer
    when their numbers pretty much exploded . The traps are set up a hundred
    feet or more from the garden so not to attract them to what I'm trying
    to protect .
    --
    Snag
    It's great to be straight !

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    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)