Squash bugs - forgive me Nature, for I have sinned
p_mac
12 years ago
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slowpoke_gardener
12 years agolast modified: 9 years agosoonergrandmom
12 years agolast modified: 9 years agoRelated Discussions
Ok, I sinned, sinned, and sinned again! I am bad. Please forgive
Comments (28)Howdy, Rose..a good excuse, but only two??? lol. Last night we went to HD and of all stores, Walgreens. Bought 2 plants at HD, Thanksgiving Cactus and bi-colored flower Cyclamen. BUT: We stopped at Walgreens for aspirin. Wouldn't you know it..adjacent the checkout counter stood a small table w/plants. At first look, they were common, but then, before I was about to walk away, there were two succulents. Ironically, while browsing Ebay yesterday, I came across a similar if not the same succulent as the one at Walgreen's. So, I bought one, though should have got both..Not a common succulent.. The outer ceramic, no-drainge container was made in Germany.. Oh, HD's plants were floating in water..A shame! Rose, I promise you..every room, even though there are plants, have furniture.. Last week we had installed LR carpet. Dh and DS hauled the desk, 'which used to hold a computer,' in the garage. Since we no longer keep a computer on the desk, I might ditch the desk. Might be nice for my tall, D. Marginata. lol. Hey Purple. Yep, Hoyas were Dead, Dead. I feel so bad. If it hadn't been for my knee plants would have been in a lot sooner. Yep, I learned a lesson...Hoyas cannot tolerate freezing temps and frozen rain. Although thick-leaf types did better, several leaves had dropped..many remaining are frost-bitten..so I have to remove a few leaves everyday..though not as many as before. Thank God! Mike..is the sun out there? Will your pics come out clear or dark? It's gloomy here, but temps are in the 60's. Still, too dark to snap a pic..I might try. Hey Purple, you and I have the same driving rules..speed unless the police are around..Great rule. I didn't know there were two people who had this right!...See MoreDreaded squash bugs have arrived
Comments (44)I haven't had much trouble with squash bugs on either melons or cucumbers, but some people have a lot of trouble with them. However, I do try to kill squash bugs when I see them, so maybe I kill off most of them before they can find the cukes or melons. Usually I grow the winter squash, melons and cukes in the back garden, which we never planted this year because of the incredibly heavy rainfall, so the squash bugs in the front garden are separated from the cukes and melons by over 100 yards. I don't know if that is why I don't have squash bug issues on the melons or cukes. This year, the melons are in the front garden and I haven't seen a squash bug on them, but I do think I wiped out all the squash bugs in June because I haven't seen any of them since then. I have Sugar Baby watermelons and Hale's Jumbo muskmelons in the front garden and haven't found any sort of pest on them yet, except for spider mites which are everywhere here in the summer and get worse as the heat worsens. The spider mite population ought to be peaking now and should start to fall soon, so I think my garden has outlasted it this year. Stockergal, I am sure the farmer who once farmed our land planted the bermuda, and I hate it. When we bought the place we had beautiful native grasses mixed with wildflowers and it was so beautiful and everything peacefully coexisted together. When it came time to mow all that down short in the area selected for our home site, so that the builder could start construction of our home, we instantly had bermuda grass pop up everywhere. Without the taller prairie grasses to shade it, it took over the area and outgrew everything else. I've been fighting to keep the bermuda grass out of beds of ornamental planting ever since. The thing that works best for me is to shade it out, but once trees are big enough to shade it out, you do have to plant a shade-loving ground-cover for erosion control. and we'll never be rid of all the bermuda because our yard never will be fully shady. Hailey, Have the row cover ready. The minute one squash pops up out of the ground, the squash bugs and SVBs will materialize out of thin air. Dawn...See More2 ?? - Organic/natural squash bug control and powdery mildew
Comments (3)Melissa, I cannot speak for Jay and am sure he'll come back and answer your question himself, but the Garlic spray I use (and I think he has used this same one in the past) is called Garlic Barrier. I usually find it at either a nursery that carries a full-line of organic gardening supplies (in my case, I have to go to the D-FW metro area to find a nursery like that) or sometimes at a feed and seed store like Tractor Supply Company. Sometimes I find it at some TSCs in spring, but not in other years, so either they carry it only sporadically or it sells out regularly. luvabasil, I am not a real huge fan of internet recipes and here is why: (1) they can give highly variable results and can be a waste of time and effort as they often are not strong enough OR (2) they are too strong and the soap or oil in them burns tender plant foliage in our heat and intense sunlight. With a commercial product, you get consistent results as long as you follow the dilution rates precisely and spray as directed, taking care not to over-spray. If these commercial products should not be used after high temperatures reach a certain label because foliage burn can result, it usually so states on the label. Sometimes when using a water-based recipe, I'll add either some commercial sticker-spray to make the recipe adhere to the leaves better, or maybe a little superfine summerweight horticultural oil, but it depends on how hot the temperatures are and also on what type of plant I'm spraying. Some plants have much more delicate foliage than others. Someone as experienced as Jay can go on the strong side by using slightly more product than the label recommends when mixing it up, but I wouldn't do that the very first time I tried a new product. There are times when your gut instinct tells you that more is better, but if you're using a product you've never used before, it can be easy to use too much and burn plant foliage. If you are using a garlic spray with a water base, that may be the issue. I think they work better when oil or soap based, but precision mixing is needed to avoid burning tender foliage. Melissia, There are not many organic methods of controlling squash bugs and the only ones that I have found really work involve hand picking and crushing or drowning them, or vacuuming them off the leaves with a shop vac or cordless hand vac with strong suction. If you use a wet-dry shop vac, put a couple of inches of water in the bottom of the cannister before you turn it on. That way the squash bugs fall into the soapy water, the soap coats their bodies and they can't get out. Without the soapy water, when you open the cannister they may be crawling up the sides of it to escape. I like to lay a 2' x 4' piece of lumber or some other wood scrap on the ground near the squash plants. The bugs congregate under it at night and, in the morning, I pick up the board and step on and smash as many of them as I can before they run away. I also get a fair number of army worms and climbing cutworms this way. I'd rather stomp on them than have to hand-pick them off of plants. I usually don't see much PM here on anything except sugar snap peas, but when I do have it on summer garden plants, I sometimes spray them with Green Cure, which is a potassium bicarbonate spray. For me, it seems stronger and more effective than the usual baking soda spray recipes often recommended for organic gardeners. If I want what I consider to be reliable recipes for home-made organic remedies that are formulated with our hot climate in mind, I go to Howard Garrett's website at dirtdoctor.com. I have found that remedies formulated for milder climates can sometimes burn foliage in our more intense heat and sunlight, but the Dirt Doctor is based in D-FW where the weather is like ours, so I always trust his recipes. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Garlic Barrier...See MoreSquash Bug Sucky solution
Comments (3)I bought a small dust buster On the recommendation of a woman at the Natural Gardener in Austin, and that was useless. I sprayed and picked things off and threw them in a tub of soapy water., but alas, it was a huge out break and I gave up. IT did work with a outbreak of Harlequin bugs. I think the trick is don't wait , start early and do it for several days....See Moretulsacityfarmer
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