Take some dishwashing liquid soap. I put a couple of good squirts in a glass with some water and mix. Then get an eye dropper and put a drop or two on each egg cluster. Will also effectivle kill the adults if drop on them and trhey can usually be found at the base of the plant. Insects breath through the skin and the soap coats the eggs or adults when applied directly on then and suffocates them. The eggs don't hatch and you can watch the adults die a painful death in a couple of minutes of pleasurful entertainment. It does however cause a burn spot on the leaves but is no more harmful to the plant than squishing and much easier.The cardboard or other board material placed near the base of the plant is very effective in providing cover for the bugs and makes it easy to find them. It is also not a good idea to mulch squash because this gives them places to hide. Rodger

We just found our crop infested with squash bugs. This being our first crop we were not familiar with these pests. After doing lots of research on them and seeing what we could do we chose to try something organic and we took the time to comb the plants first and find them. When we did we had a small bowl of water with a small amount of dish soap in it and placed the bug in the bowl (where they drowned). As for the eggs we used tape and pulled them off the leafs that way. However to our surprise those boogers were on both sides of the leaves. So we had to go over it again. Then we watered the plants and what we missed came to the top to dry. And we caught them as well and drowned them. We caught today 33 adults and some 400-500 eggs (no exaggeration). We will be doing this daily for the next couple weeks. Then we will be moving our crop next year to another area and take precautions from the beginning. Making sure to plant things around them that repel the SB. Good luck with these things.

Farmgardener, Thanks for the kind words. I have to confess that I had released ladybugs for years before I finally figured out what the larvae looked like....and then it was only because I saw these peculiar gray alligator-shaped things and wanted to know what they were. Much 'googling' later, I knew they were ladybug larvae. Okiefamily, You know, the larvae are actually cuter than they appear in that photo. Most of the ones I see are a lighter gray with some pale orange splotches. If I can google and find a photo of some that look like that, I will link it below. They do look really, really odd as they get older and begin to look more like actual lady bugs. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful:

Robbie, I just want to emphasize that melons need a lot of water EARLY in the growing season, but not later on. If you are watering every other day, that is probably too often. Watering deeply once a week is the most they will need and, if you water more often, you run the risk of having big watery melons with no flavor. I cannot emphasize that strongly enough. Picture your cantaloupe as a 44 oz. Big Gulp soft drink. It has JUST the right amount of sugar and would taste great just as it is. Then, pour your 44 oz. Big Gulp into a 1 gallon pitcher and fill up the rest of the pitcher with water. How does that Big Gulp taste now? Not so wonderful. Well, that is what happens with melons (any melon, whether it is a muskmelon, true cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon, etc.). They have an optimal amount of water they need, and anything beyond that just waters down the flavor and ruins the melon. Each individual melon has a specific brix (degree of sweetness) that it achieves in optimal conditions. When it gets more water, it does not create more sugar, and that is why the flavor suffers. Overwatering melons is a common gardening error, as is overfeeding watermelons (gives you white heart and no flavor). Courtney, You didn't ask, but here's my corn advice anyway....there are only a couple of ways to beat the corn earworms and corn borers, and some years they don't work all that well. First, choosing a type with tightly wrapped husks (like Silver Queen or Merit, for example) helps with the earworms, but not the borers since they bore right through the husks. Secondly, spraying the ears every few days with a Bt caterpillar killer will generally kill the earworms and borers fairly quickly, although they may do some small amount of damage before they ingest enought Bt to kill them. Third, you can use an eyedropper to drop a few drops of mineral oil (vegeable oil like canola, corn, olive, etc.) into the silk end of the ears just as the silks dry. This makes it impossible for the tiny earworms to get into the ears--the oil suffocates them, I think, as they try to crawl into the ear. Fourth, planting as early as you possibly can will often give you ripe corn before the earworms and borers arrive. Finally, some desperate gardeners put sheer organza-type bags over each ear once the silks are drying (indicating pollination is complete) and tie them tightly to keep the earworms out. I don't know if European Corn Borers would bore through the bags though. Others put paper bags over the ears after pollination is complete, and wrap tape around the bag to close it securely. To me, the bagging is too much trouble and makes it hard to test an ear for milkiness to see if it is ripe. Finally, if you plant early and the corn earworms and borers arrive and get into the corn while it is still pollinating, you can usually salvage the ears by cutting out the wormy parts. Then, of course, there's the raccoons, but that's a whole different problem. And, Robbie and Courtney, I don't think it matters how long you've been gardening--one year or twenty years or forty years--or whatever--you always continue to learn new methods and better ways of doing things. When you are growing a garden, you're not just "growing plants" but "growing a gardener" as well. Dawn