Squash bug control - some serious questions.......

13 years ago

Hello all,

In a day or two I will be tearing down my winter squash vines and clearing away the debris. Today I noticed a huge infestation of squash bugs just crawling all over the vines and mature squash. Hundreds of them so there is no way I can "just knock them off". As we all know they scatter away when you try to catch them. This is what I plann to do -- will it work??

Double strength Sevin spray with spreader sticker in pump sprayer and spray down the vines and leaves until dripping. Let this sit for 2-3 days then tear down the vines and put all debris into black plastic bags for disposal.

Dormant oil spray in pump sprayer and spray down all vines and leaves until dripping. Let sit few days then trash vines and debris as above.

My thinking is to kill as many of the bugs as possible before removing the vines so as to prevent them from overwintering and coming back even stronger in 2011.

Other ideas?? I am open to most ideas but I am not going organic on this one.

Let me know what you think..........

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Comments (5)

farmerdilla
13 years ago
I expect that you will find that squash bugs will treat the Sevin as desert. There are not many if any insecticides available without a license that will kill a squash bug. I have not tried agricultural oils. That may work in high concentrations. At any rate your plan to remove their habitat will stand you in good stead next year. Sanitation is the first step in control.
dancinglemons
Original Author
13 years ago
Thanks farmerdilla,

The tip about the Sevin is greatly appreciated. I will use the dormant oil - it seems to kill just about everything. I have never had such an infestation as I have now. This year the cucumber beetles and squash bugs were impossible. The cucumber beetles even began to eat holes in my Basil and Thai Basil plants!! The only squash plant that survived without any harm was the Seminole (C. moschata).

Thanks again,
DL
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friedabyler
13 years ago
Hi dancinglemons, I had the same problem this year with squash bugs; they were horrible, the worst I've ever seen. Neem and hot pepper spray [regularly!] kept them under control, but NOTHING we tried eliminated them. Our Seminoles handled it the best, but still suffered.
We plan to torch our pumpkin/squash patch, soon as everything is ripe enough to harvest. [The Seminoles are wearing nylon knee hi's just so they can ripen without being eaten!]
dancinglemons
Original Author
13 years ago
Thanks everyone for your input. I think I got a pretty good handle on the squash bugs. I did not eliminate them 100% but probably 80% destruction was obtained. I am at season end and there will be no more harvest from these plants - please keep that in mind. Here is what I did:

In a one gallon pressure sprayer I mixed 1/2 cup of Dormant Oil Spray, 1/2 cup 80% Neem Oil, 1 cup Rotenone and then 1 teaspoon of Coco-wet spreader sticker. I sprayed this on a day when the temp was about 82 degrees. I sprayed the vines until they were dripping wet. I estimate 50% of the vines were already dead, brown and crispy. The HUGE swarm of squash bugs that emerged from the dead brown leaves was amazing!! There were so many it looked like the vine was moving. I sprayed everything that moved. I found a small swarm of them in the vent leading to my crawl space and I sprayed them with wasp knock-down spray - that bunch is DEAD!! Next day I looked and could only see a few of the squash bugs. After 48 hours I sprayed with 1 cup Rotenone and 1 teaspoon spreader sticker in 1 gallon water.

Did I kill them?? I do not know. They are 80% (give or take) gone. I will be putting a flea bomb in the crawl space once a month until January - just in case any females decide to overwinter under my house. In the spring we will use our torch to torch the area around the raised beds. We can not torch our dead vines at this time because everything is so dry - no rain in long, long time.

See the New York Times for an article on stink-bug infestation in the Mid-Atlantic States. Seems the Dept of Agriculture is working overtime on developing something to kill the stink bugs. I know squash bugs and stink bugs are not the same bug but I think they are cousins.

Cheers,
DL

Here is a link that might be useful: Stink Bug article in NY Times
dancinglemons
Original Author
12 years ago
Hello all,

The drastic measures we took in fall 2010 must have worked somewhat. Over the winter I did much research and found that soil drench of 100% neem will kill overwintering cucumber beetle larva and adults. That is for 2011 season end soil treatment.

So far this season we have only average amounts of cuke beetles and squash bugs.

Here is what I am doing this season:

Started season with my own seeds which I started inside under lights. After plants grew to transplant size I dipped them in Surround WP until they looked like they had been dusted with flour. I then transplanted them outside.
Every 4-5 days I sprayed squash and cukes with Surround to keep the leaves white. If we had a hard rain I sprayed the Surround if it was washed off. A few weeks ago we had 3 days of hard rain which pretty much washed the Surround away. This rain also signaled the beginning of cucumber beetle problems. I sprayed the Surround again but this time I added SaferSoap. This was OK for the squash bugs as I only picked 5 bugs and 4 sets of eggs. This was NOT ok for the cuke beetles. I did more research and found that the Ag folks at Virginia Tech used Bifenthrin (Ortho Bug-B-Gon Max) with excellent results. Back to my research and hours online checking on Bifenthrin. I found that it works wonders for squash bugs and cuke beetles. I sprayed 2x (7 days apart) with the Bifenthrin and I'm happy with the results.

Am I 100% free of these monsters?? No. Today I shook my arch trellis pretty hard and instead of a swarm of cuke beetles I saw only a few AND I only had to squish ONE squash bug.

Cheers,
DL
Surround does not kill bugs it makes it really difficult for them to lay eggs and to feed.

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Squash bug control - some serious questions.......

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Squash bug control - some serious questions.......

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