Spraying plants with bug juice, or leaving a can of dead bugs on display, can't hurt, and probably helps. I had read that the JB sends a scout and then the scout releases a scent telling others it's a good spot. My experience last year goes along with that. I was in the garden, one arrived and I hadn't yet set up my can. I was working on putting my glove on, but before I could, two more came, started sexing on a leaf, and then a bunch more piled on. I ran and set up the can and started flicking them in and kept the can at hand, but also on display in case there was some kind of scent of death. The first year I had JB, I got the scout and stepped on him, then left his body on the ground. I definitely think there's something to this, although I've never been able to catch cucumber beetles quickly enough. They're tricky.

Boy, I'm really confused. I *think* (or thought) this was a vine borer, but I've not actually seen the worm or pile of poo sawdust. I've seen a hole in a stalk. My main symptom has been morning wilt. The first day, I thought it needed water and I watered it well. It perked back up and that was that. But then next morning, it was wilted again, looking like it needed water. If this had been afternoon, I might have assumed it was from the heat of the sun. Now, I've been going out around noon every day and spritzing the whole plant - including a really healthy little fruit and beautiful blossoms - with Maxicrop (liquid seaweed, no iron). It perks back up in the afternoon. And today, I decided NOT to spritz just to see what happened...by afternoon, this guy looks just fine. It's just in the morning, poor thing is all drooped over, such a sad, sad sack. Could this be something else? I'm going to go post this in the curcurbit forum and see if anyone there might know as well, but could really use some knowledge. My experience with wilt and curcurbits has always been wilt=certain death. (Unless it's just wilted from not enough water) I don't get it.

I have seen nothing to indicate that leaving the ends of FRC tunnels is a means of keeping insects off the target plants and I have heard from some that tried that and ended up with insect pests on those plants. Slitting the stem and killing the larva is an old tried and true method of control and does nothing to harm the plant if that stem is buried in soil where it will develop roots. The bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis - Kurstaki can be injected into a stem that has the larva for a short time. Age, of the larva, determines how effective that BtK will be. Some may tell you that BtK is not effective but that is because they did not use it until the larva was too big for the bacterium to be effective.

Hazel, I grow as much of our food as I can, and that means spending tons of time preserving the harvest (via canning, dehydrating, blanching/freezing and root cellar type storage) so we'll have home-grown produce year-round. I buy a mixture of organic/non-organic food from the grocery store. I'd love to buy only organic food but we have a budget to live within and it does not allow for only organic food. I do not know if non-organic foods are less healthy and will leave that debate to the food scientists. What I do know is that I'd rather eat food that was grown in the most natural way possible. For me, eating as much naturally-grown food as possible is a personal choice. I am a 16-year cancer survivor and as soon as I was diagnosed with cancer, I began eating only an organic vegan diet. The vegan part was really hard for me because I grew up in Texas and love meat, especially beef. My family wasn't crazy about a vegan diet, but put up with it (at least when they ate at home) for me. After about 6 months, I began adding meat and dairy back to our diet. We still eat healthier that we used to but not as healthy as we did during those six months. When the National Organic Standards Board was developing the standards to be used by certified organic growers, there was much debate and compromise. Some organic food advocates felt the standards were watered down and weren't completely happy with the standards as written and implemented. Some organic advocates were disappointed and felt the organic standards were too lax and were quite vocal about that. I watched the debate with interest. For me, though, I'd rather eat organically-grown food even if the standards under which it is grown are somewhat less than perfect. One reason I grow as much of our produce as I can is because that is the only way I know exactly what was or wasn't sprayed on it. If the choice is between a strawberry grown in our garden with no chemicals sprayed on it versus a conventionally-raised strawberry that may have been sprayed with various synthetic products from 1 to 3 times a week, guess which one I'd rather be eating? Just because a pesticide, herbicide or fungicide is organic in origin does not necessarily mean it is safer than a pesticide, herbicide or fungicide that is synthetic in origin. There are some organic products I've never used and never will use. I'm planting my 18th spring garden right now (my first was planted a year before we broke ground for the house), and I have used a synthetic pesticide once (last year, to save the garden from huge hordes of grasshoppers) and it almost killed me. I won't say I'll never use a synthetic pesticide again but I hope it will be another 18 years before I feel like that is the only option left to save my garden. I even use organic pesticides sparingly and, in fact, most years I don't use them at all. I use them very selectively and only for the worst of pests. Sometimes I'll spray neem oil, for example, on one specific plant that has a pest issue but won't spray the whole garden or even that whole row. I'd rather hand-pick and use other methods to remove the pests. I never spray Spinosad because it is a broad-spectrum pesticide that can harm some beneficial insects, but I'll use it in a granular product (Slug-Go Plus) that I sprinkle on the ground to kill pill bugs and sow bugs. I also use a granular organic fire any product that contains Spinosad. Other than neem and Spinosad, I sometimes use a product containing Bt 'kurstaki' on brassicas and that's about it. I mostly rely on our population of beneficial insects to help keep the pest levels low, and on hand-picking bugs or using floating row covers to exclude them from crops. I think that produce grown in the most natural way possible tastes better, and we all know that produce fresh from the garden is the best-tasting, healthiest food around. I like being able to harvest in the morning and then use some or all of that harvest in the meals we eat that day. And, on the list of what really matters, the use of synthetic pesticides bothers me the most. I have less of an issue with synthetic fungicides or fertilizers. I think every gardener has the right to grow their plants, whether ornamental or edible, in whatever manner they choose. I just choose to grow mine as naturally as I can. When I first transitioned from conventional gardening to organic gardening in the 1990s, I essentially kept gardening exactly as I always had with the only change being that I was substituting products that were organic in origin for those that were synthetic in origin. After moving here, I began to take steps to go beyond that and that was the beginning of my progression to go sort of beyond merely growing organicallyand focus more on gardening in the most natural and sustainable way. Whether you will be pleased with the winter squash/pumpkins you chose as fall decorations depends on whether you think all autumn pumpkin displays must include big orange pumpkins. I love all the C. moschatas for fall decorations because I like their various shades from buff-colored Seminole to the almost brownish-buff color of Musquee de Provence. For 7 or 8 years before the squash vine borers found us here, I always grew huge numbers of winter squash and pumpkins in all colors---including orange, yellow, white, buff, green and some that were speckled, splotched, striped or warted. It was fun while it lasted and they made great autumn displays, but the SVBs have made it impossible for me to have that wide variety of colors now, so I am content with the colors of the C. moschata group, which mostly are in a range of buff-colored shades. Having become used to what I have now in terms of sizes and colors, I am content with pumpkins that aren't traditional jack-o-lantern types. And, sometimes I want a big orange pumpkin in the fall and plop it down in the middle of the display with my home-grown ones. Dawn