This is just personal experience, although I seem to recall others reporting the same thing. When a young squash is only starting to produce females, it is still quite frail to produce viable fruit. If your largest leaves are only about 6" long, the plant is too young to support the fruit even if the weather is right and you have both male and female flowers. It's as though the plant hasn't had its first period and so it can't get preggers even if there has been major reproductive action (like yellow and black striped bees or buff-coloured bees). My first half dozen females all aborted. The flowers dried out, dropped and the baby zuke shriveled up and rotted. I, too, was alarmed by this the first time, but so far, this has been my experience with all four zukes I've had, and they all ended up producing. The information on plants not being able to support multiple fruit is valuable. I think zukes often start out looking like there is a production problem when there really isn't. It's one of those plants that takes a little patience. It's good to ask questions, but if you have squash that isn't behaving as you expected, it is best to give it some time. As long as the squash doesn't have any funky symptoms, like discoloration of leaves, spots and blotches or funky weird bugs on leaves or close to the main stem near the ground, patience is usually the best medicine.

In my area, (central New York), the critter that lays the eggs on the zukes, stops laying eggs after June 17th, (or so I've read). I plant my zuke seeds around June 10th and don't seem to have this problem anymore. Ummm, I don't know about that... I killed two SVB moths last week... and a third one flew off after being blasted by a hard stream from the pump sprayer... all 3 were within about 15 minutes timeframe. If I sit in a chair in front of my garage, maybe 10ft from my pumpkin plant, I usually see one land somewhere between noon and 2pm. I have the pump sprayer ready. I sneak up on them, getting as closer as I can, blast them, they fly off to another leaf, blast them, try to knock them out, then find a way thru all the 2ft tall leaves & vines and look for them before they gain their senses and step on them and grind them into the ground...phew, sorry for being so violently decriptive! lol. ...but I've had some still moving after stepping on them in grass & weeds... you really need to give that "firmly planted ball of the foot twisting motion", 3 or 4 times! lol. You can also whack them with a flyswatter, but be prepared to do it more than once! Mark

I still see no difference. I'm spraying the roses on the chance that mildew spores will land on it and infect the plant. The spray has a longer effective time than BT, obviously, but it's limited too, that's why I have to spray every 1-2 weeks (and failing to, I get mildew infestation like I did last year and beginning of this year when I got negligent about it). Since at this point I'm positive my plants WILL get SVB. No matter how hard I search for eggs, I'm going to wind up with them. It's not a matter of if, but when, then at some point my weekly injection will overlap a point of time when they're too small for me to see obvious signs of them, but already inside eating, and kill them before they do too much harm. I got to them with injections this year before they did enough damage to kill the plants, but they still did enough damage to hurt production and weaken the plants. Taking a preventative approach, I may be able to kill them before my plants are weakened. You do a series of injections up the entire vine, and the amount you inject is actually pretty low to fill the cavity in the vine. I only mix a cup full and after injecting six plants, I still have some left over that I usually spray onto my broccoli. This post was edited by CaraRose on Fri, Sep 6, 13 at 12:18

If you have had squash borers infest your squash previously, chances are his larvae is in the soil from last year. That larvae can find the roots, so covering the base will only block new moths looking to lay their annoying little babies, not the ones you already have. I have wrapped my stems with plastic wrap and foil, and it didn't help. I rip up plants when infested and throw them away-and STILL get them. I loathe those bugs, they kill my squash every year. Last year I grew a late crop in an earthbox, and it made up for all the loss. I had about a dozen summer squash without any freaking borers from that box-oddly mostly pollinated by fruit flies too! Woot! This year I am growing in both the garden and earthboxes. I have row covers for the boxes too. I just need to time the season these freaking moths from hell will be here. Most articles say late June-early July, but is that too general for all zones? I think I am 6b-7. So this year (2014) my attack will be crop rotation (I always do-but brand new spot completely never had squash-only butternut) and row covers during the moth stage. I will also have a back up crop started in seed starters in case of infestation. They break me every year, but I always try and try again! -I also have bunnies, aphids, powdery mildew, slugs it's a constant battle here! Good luck to you all and quick death to them!