I'm with you. SVB has been my biggest problem and I am looking for an organic way to handle them. I have put hoops over the squash bed with summer weight row covers over it. When the plants begin to blossom, I am going to go to the trouble to hand pollinate and keep the plants covered. This is feasible since I only have two hills of squash. In a huge bed, maybe not so much. FYI, the borers will also lay eggs in the soil, which can overwinter and have babies waiting for next year's crop. Be sure to rotate your squash bed! Also, there are varieties of squash that are immune to these borers: moschata being one. The trouble is, the squash we like best are also the moth's favorites. This is the method I have chosen for this year, based on what I have read on the internet and, most importantly, in this forum. I will post to let you know how it works.

cmonkey :I've thought the same thing too, and remember trying to figure out what they mean by "wild cucurbits". tigrikt - Thanks for posting that article. I love reading those old articles and seeing what people did a long time ago. I had to google "Cymlings" as I had no idea what he was talking about... they are another name for "Pattypan"... interesting. I always wonder what the Native americans did, when they grew pumpkins. I bet they probably had some good tricks they used. Its interesting how the articles names these different pesticides they recommend. Looking them up, they are all banned now for home use for being too toxic. Its a wonder our ancestors didn't all die of cancer and poisoning with all these chemicals they used! I like the idea of an "ovicide". I wonder if we have anything now in modern times would not be very toxic but could do the same thing. Would be a lot easier to just spray the vines than hand pick the eggs.

I have grown Tatume here a couple of times. While it outcompetes squash bugs, the squash vine borers still can kill it in a year when they are really bad. I don't grow it any more because we liked the flavor/texture of Seminole harvested young (baseball to softball-sized) better than Tatume. It is a huge space hog too, and because I already grow 6-10 kinds of C. moschatas most years, the last thing I need is a space hog that isn't as tasty as they are. Bon, I couldn't help noticing how many of my favorite Texas horticulturalists (Sam Cotner, Malcom Beck, Howard Garrett) were in Howard Garrett's story about Malcom's pumpkin. (Mr. Garrett and Mr. Beck write extensively on organic gardening and all their books are excellent, and Mr. Cotner wrote THE book on growing Vegetables in Texas. I've worn out 3 copies of it and am on my 4th.) Jay White, by the way, writes regularly for Texas Gardener magazine (as does Greg Grant) and their articles and columns are the first ones I read when a new magazine arrives. It is a well-known and well-understood phenomenon that healthy plants grown in healthy soil are more disease tolerant and more pest tolerant than less healthy plants. When pests relentlessly attack plants, I try to figure out what it is about those specific plants that make them less healthy and, therefore, more alluring to pests and to diseases. Sometimes it is obvious to me because the plants under attack are growing in less healthy soil. Sometimes it is something much more subtle---like cool-season plants that are beginning to be subjected to hotter temperatures than they like. Howard Garrett makes a convincing argument for us to grow our brassicas in the fall only in this part of the country because they have less pests since they are less stressed in cooler conditions---and I believe he is right about that. And, there are some pests, like grasshoppers, that relentlessly attack everything still green in the hot summer months, whether the plants are healthy and happy are not. So, for every "rule" that we observe, their is an exception, and I find grasshoppers to be one of the exceptions to the rule that healthy plants in healthy soil are not attacked by pests and diseases. I grew up eating yellow summer squash for as far back as I can remember and nothing I've ever grown as a more pest-tolerant substitute for it is 100% acceptable. When I want yellow squash, I simply want yellow squash---nothing else will do. So, in order to have it, I just grow it in low tunnel rows under row cover and hand-pollinate it. I feel like I don't have to settle for less in my own garden, and growing Tatume instead of the yellow squash I really want is, indeed, settling for less. You'll never know how you feel about Tatume until you grow it yourself. I just wasn't crazy about the flavor and didn't find it to be a really heavy producer either. To be fair to Tatume, it never will look like a heavy producer when it is grown adjacent to Seminole because Seminole outproduces it (and everything else) every single time. There is a reason Seminole is a perennial fave in our garden----it is beaten everything else for about 15 years now, and that track record is hard to break. It has been around forever....I can remember it being on seed racks in Texas when I was a child, although I think then it likely was sold as Calabacita, because that is the name that pops into my head every time I see a packet of the seeds. For squash vine borer tolerance or resistance, as George noted, C. moschatas will win every time and, for me, the C. agyrospermas like White Cushaw, Green-Striped Cushaw and Orange-Striped Cushaw are in second place. Tatume might come in third, or actually, a distant fourth behind every kind of yellow summer squash that exists when grown under row cover. YMMV. You can grow any squash or pumpkin you want if only you'll grow them under summerweight row cover, tulle netting, mosquito netting, etc. and hand-pollinate. Does it take longer and a bit more effort? Sure it does, but it is worth it to avoid the heartbreak of losing plants to the dastardly SVBs. Dawn

sneed, I have found they actually prefer to lay eggs on the underside of vines. They bend their bodies to lay them right up against the underside of the vine. Here is what I do... when I inspect the vines, I pick up the vine and inspect the underside too. Then I bury that portion of the vine, either with dirt or mulch, so the SVBs can't get at the vines. So at that point I don't have to check that portion anymore. That way the vines also re-root along the vine and plants survive. SVB will still lay eggs on the leaf stems but you can try to remove them, or inject the leaf stems with BT solution if you wish, but this method has slowed down the SVB enough for me to give me some good pumpkins. I live in SVB infested Texas, with 2 or 3 generations! I also cover my young plants with tulle netting, or any other netting should work. Then at least until the plants overgrow the netting , or start flowering, I never have to worry about SVBs or Squash bugs. I would definitely do that if I were you.