In my opinion, beetle traps with lure is not for a small garden. I used them once and had all neighborhood beetles in my yard whole summer long. Without lure yellow sticky pads catch some of the beetles, but much more they catch flies and whole pad is covered in one day. I ended up with planting my cucumbers in permanent tulle cover on trellis(planting only parthenocarpic types ) and other plants (zucchinis , melons ) are all covered while small, until they start flowering. I noticed, the beetles do not harm older squash that much as cucumbers, just because squashes are less prone to the wilt then cucumbers. I don't know about pumpkins(don't grow them). If plants are still very small I think you still should cover them. The beetles are not that fast moving in very early morning hours(right after dawn) , so you can pick them all and make a cover right after that. Shaking them off in the soapy water or using portable hand held vacuum works the best, Smashing disturbs the plants as well. Continue to check under cover if you miss any. Tulle is a good cover for it - you can see through very well. Good luck!

I saw this thread...I am having a problem finding both the clove oil and the dental tabs. If I could at least find the clove oil, I'd even be willing to go get the Sevin and hope that the cups don't dump. Another question...if I just cut down the vines to almost nothing, will they come back? I've got about another 2 months of summer...geez it's only just gotten summer warm in the last two weeks or so. Maybe if I cut them back, put out the cups, get rid of the beetles, by the time they grow back, the beetles will be gone? thoughts?

Up until five or six years ago, I always had problems growing cukes. A suggestion on this forum resulted in my trying floating row covers and it has pretty much solved my problems (which, in all honesty, were never as bad as yours look). I would get a few cukes and then a variety of diseases, all cucumber beetle transmitted, apparently, would hit and then my garden resembled yours. Now I cover the plants with a floating row cover on my 4 X 8 foot beds as soon as they are an inch or so tall and I have had a chance to thin appropriately. The cover stays on until the plants bloom. I previously lay down a soaker hose for watering but you can water through the row cover. The result right now is a bed of cukes that look they just jumped out of a seed catalog. Provide trellises or poles to grow your cukes vertically after the covers come off. I also select only the most disease resistant cuke varieties I can find. Have pretty much settled in on Alibi and especially Eureka. They are both pickling types but grow large enough for slicing and salad use. I have extended my use of row covers to Bush Beans, Radishes, and Lettuce with improved results here, also. It keeps both bugs and bunnies away. I know we are in quite different zones. I'm here on the shores of Buzzards Bay. But gardening anywhere has commonalities which might be shared to mutual benefit. Good luck to you my friend. Hope this suggestion proves useful. Victor

Bon, I am sure that the cucumber beetles transmit lots of diseases. The main ones that they usually transmit to cucurbits are bacterial wilt and cucumber mosaic virus. They also often transmit several different virus infections to beans. That's the huge issue with cucumber beetles and the only solution I know of is to grow under row covers that exclude the cucumber beetles or to spray the cucumber plants with Spinosad or some other botanical (organic) insecticide like Pyganic or Neem. Or, you can try growing a cucumber variety that has been bred to have a high tolerance of bacterial wilt. Most years I have cucumber beetles all over the place from February or March through about November. This year, I didn't see a single one until August. It was wonderful, and it likely never will happen again. While they weren't here earlier, they're here now and I was not happy to see them appear. In the absence of cucumbers, the cucumber beetles will visit just about any other plant you have. I just hate them. Some beneficial insects such as green lacewings, lady bugs and spined soldier bugs feed upon the cucumber beetle eggs or larva and that will help control the cucumber beetles, but here in our rural area, more just fly in every day so you have to have tons of beneficials to maintain any control of the highly mobile cucumber beetles. Birds and bats will eat cucumber beetles, so putting up bird houses or a bat house can help attract those predators to your garden. I also have a birdbath and bird feeders near my garden to attract more songbirds. My garden is full of birds right now, and I think they are feasting on grasshoppers and other pests....maybe that includes cucumber beetles. Dragonflies and damselflies eat lots of flying insects, but mostly small ones like mosquitoes and midges. They also will eat craneflies/mayflies, some butterflies and moths, and even smaller dragonflies or damselflies. Dragonflies are one of my favorite predators and because we have several ponds (albeit they have mostly been empty this year), we generally have tons of dragonflies and damselflies. They fly back and forth from the ponds to the garden all day long, and often sit on the tomato cages or trellises for watching for insects to prey upon. Dawn