This has probably been covered elsewhere, but I'm wondering about whether Bt stem injections are useful as an SVB damage preventative. Perhaps a stupid question, so bear with me. My understanding of the usual strategy is that you wait until you see the frass, and then squirt Bt into the hole to kill the bugger. But why not just fill the vines with Bt solution? Yes, that's maybe a lot of fluid, but the Bt is cheap. Very diluted. I can make tens of gallons for a few bucks. Instead of inspecting all the vines carefully every day or two, this way, I figure I'd just pump 'em up say, every week. I've never done Bt injection, as I like row covers, but row covers are hard to do for non-vining cucurbits, like zukes. How many gallons (ounces?) of Bt does it take to fill up a zuke plant? How long does the fluid stay in the stems? Do they leak?

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'd use spinosad instead of sevin. Although it's been touted for years as OK to place on veggies, sevin is horrible. Of course, if you're not going to make pies out of the pumpkin, it's alright, still not good for environment. This link will tell you about spinosad and controlling squash vine borer, scroll down to chemical control: http://www.extension.org/pages/65684/biology-and-management-of-squash-vine-borer-in-organic-farming-systems#.U5T0ifldXNl Also, link to the fallacy of using sevin dust: http://foodtruthfreedom.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/why-grow-vegetables-and-put-poison-on-them/ Either way, good luck with your pumpkins. A great project the kids will always remember :)

Squash Vine Borers are very hard to control and you have to take a multifaceted approach in order to achieve good control. Most people don't give Squash Vine Borers a second thought until they see their plants wilting and dying. To outwit the SVBs, you have to engage in year-round practices that harm them. With squash vine borers, it is always preferable to be proactive and to do everything in your power to prevent them from getting to your plants. Once they are inside the plant, there is little you can do except slit open the stem and remove them. Some research has indicated that infested plants can have up to 100 SVBs inside them, but I usually only have a couple in any given plant, so slitting the vine open and removing them is pretty easy for a home gardener, but imposssible for someone growing acres of cucurbits. At the broadest level, you want to use garden system practices to combat SVBs. This can include timing plants very early to try to get a harvest before SVBs arrive and kill the plants, and using succession plantings to give you a harvest after Oklahoma's two separate generations of SVBs are through doing their dirty work. You also can use cultivar selection. Squash Vine Borers prefer Hubbard Squash above all others. You can use this knowledge to your advantage in a couple of different ways. 1) If you want to raise Hubbard Squash, give it extra attention using Level 2 and 3 practices mentioned below; OR 2) Plant Hubbard Squash outside your regular veggie garden and use it as a trap crop. Hopefully, the SVBs will be drawn to it and you can find them/destroy them on these plants before they move on to the other types of cucurbits in your regular veggie plot. If you are using Hubbard Squash as a trap plot, you shouldn't expect to harvest any Hubbards since they are the 'sacrificial' plants that may give your other plants a better chance of survival. Another systemic practice that can reduce SVB populations is to manage your garden plot well. This includes prompt removal/destruction of all infested plants, late fall rototilling of soil where cucurbits grew in order to expose overwintering pupae/larvae to predators and weather, and deep incorporation digging or plowing or tilling in spring just before planting. Deep incorporation helps by burying any surviving larvae/pupae very deep in the soil which may prevent them from emerging. Another systemic practice is to rotate your cucurbit plantings to a new bed or area of the garden each year. This may help some because the newly emerged SVB moths will have to 'travel' to find plants to attack instead of emerging from the soil right there in the squash patch. However, research shows newly emerged SVBs can travel up to 1/2 mile to find squash plants, so rotation may help reduce their numbers or slow them down, but it isn't a 'cure'. During the SVB season, as soon as you realize a cucurbit plant is dying and cannot be saved, remove it promptly from the garden and destroy it. You can destroy it by burning the plant debris if you are in an area where open burning of brush is not prohibited by burn ban laws or local ordinances, or you can bag up the plant debris and dispose of it with household trash. You also can destroy the SVBs inside the plants by hot composting of the debris. All of the above systemic practices can help limit the SVB population's ability to survive in your soil and emerge, but those practices won't prevent them. To do that, you need to use another level of good gardening practices: physical and mechanical prevention practices. At this level, you're trying to keep SVBs that appear in your garden (whether locally hatched or migrating ones) from getting to your plants. For this, you can use any/all of the following: A barrier product on the ground to keep emerging SVBs from traveling to the plants. You can use newspaper or cardboard on top of the soil surface, or you can use landscape fabric. On top of this type of barrier, place a thick layer of hay or straw mulch or whatever else you have handy. The layer of cardboard/paper/landscape fabric beneath the mulch just makes it harder for the SVBS to emerge easily. To prevent flying SVBs from landing on your plants and laying eggs, you can use a lightweight (sort of gauzey-looking) floating row cover like Agribon or Reemay but it MUST BE tightly secured to keep the SVBs from getting underneath it. Also, it must be used over beds where cucurbits were not grown during the previous year. Otherwise, you're likely to have SVBs emerge from the soil under the floating row cover. When you use floating row covers, you either have to remove them when it is time for pollination since they will exclude bees and other pollinators, or you'll have to lift the floating row cover and hand-pollinate. If you hand-pollinate, watch very closely for the SVB moths while doing so because they are likely to get on the plants during that few minutes that you are conducting hand-pollination. One way to protect your cucurbit plants from SVBs is to raise seedlings in containers and transplant the into the ground. At the time you are transplanting, wrap the stems to protect them and be sure your wrapped portion of the stem extends an inch or two underground. Continue wrapping as the plant grows so that you have 6" to 8" of stem above the ground that is protected. You can use aluminum foil to wrap stems if you want, or you can use the legs of panty hose (and they are great because they stretch and expand) or you can use strips of floating row cover. While you want to wrap the entire stem, leave the wrapping loose enough that the stem can grow and expand so it will not become girdled. Stems wrapped in this manner generally exclude small larvae from penetrating and getting into the stem. Another good practice is to heap dirt over a section of vine every 3 to 4 feet as the vines grow. This will encourage the plants to root into the soil at those spots and that will help the overall plant survive even if you lose a portion of it to SVBs. Other practices you can employ at this level is the use of moth traps (available at online companies that special in organic gardening solutions), barrier products like Surround (kaolin clay) and the planting of insectary plants to attarct beneficial insects. Finally, your third level involves the use of certain materials and practicers to directly 'attack' SVBs that are already present in/around your garden. This includes the use of botanical insecticides like BT 'Kurstaki', spinosad, pyrethrum and DE. However, for the most part, these are only effective if you use them before the larvae penetrate the stems. Once they are inside the stems, you have to slit the stems and remove them and destroy them. Then you bury the slit portion of the stem and water well the next few days so the stem can heal and re-root and hopefully survive. You can apply beneficial nematodes too. You can mix them with water and apply them to the ground following package directions (they are most effective if applied in early to mid-Spring) and they should attack and kill any pupae/larvae they find in the soil. You also can inject them into infested plant stems. You can inject Bt 'kurstaki' in the same way. You can spray your plants with Bt 'kurstaki' weekly, and you can spray weekly with insecticidal soap to smother eggs before they hatch. You also can rub a damp cloth up and down the plant stems once or twice a week (I wear disposable latex gloves when doing this) to remove eggs before they can hatch. You can spray the plants weekly with a botanically-derived pesticide like spinosad, pyrethrum or neem but if you use these, be careful with your timing so you don't hurt the bees and other pollinators. You can use rotenone but its use is strongly discouraged because of research that links it to health problems. You should watch your plants carefully, checking them every couple of days for SVB eggs. Be sure to check the leaf stems because often they are laid there. Remove any destroy/dispose of any eggs your find. To a certain extent you can control squash vine borers by selecting plants that are less susceptible to them. In order of preference from highest to lowest preference, the SVBs prefer C. maxima, C. pepo, C. moschata and C. agrgyrosperma (formerly known as mixta). The C. maxima group includes the following kinds of squashes: hubbard, buttercup, Australian blue, turban, banana, zapalito, mammoth (giant) exhibition squashes and a few miscellanous ones that don't fall into any of those groups. Some common maximas include Jarrahdale, Queensland Blue, Triamble, Guatemalan Blue Sibley, Pink Banana and Blue Banana, any variety of Buttercup, Golden Hubbard, Green Hubabard, Red Warty Thing (aka Victor), Dill's Atlantic Giant, Jaune Gros de Paris, Cindarella (aka Rogue Vif d'Etampes) Turk's Turban, Marina di Chioggia, Lumina, Valencia, Fortna White, Georgia Candy Roaster and Galeuse d'Eysines. C. pepo includes virtually all summer squash (crookneck, straightneck, scallop), acorn squash, Halloween-type pumpkins, nonedible ornamental gourds, zucchini and vegetable marrows like spaghetti squash. The C. pepo group includes Howden, Lady Godiva, Jack-B-Little, Connecticut Field Pumpkin and all other orange pumpkins, Winter Luxury Pie, Table Queen and all similar acorn squash, all Delicata squash, all scalloped/pattypan squash like White Bush Scallop and Benning's Green Tint, Early Prolific Straightneck and all other straightneck and crookneck types, Spaghetti Squash, Golden Zucchini, Costa Romanesco, Cocozelle, etc. C. moschata includes all the tropical pumpkins, cheese pumpkins, neck pumpkins and japonica pumpkins. Some of the more well-known moschatas are Seminole, Long Island Cheese, Musquee' de Provence, Lunga di Napoli, Golden Cushaw, Japanese Black Futtsu, and Yokohama. Here in Oklahoma, none of the moschata I've grown have been bothered by SVBs. C. Argyrosperma (formerly known as C. mixta) includes squashes grown primarly for their seeds and includes most neck pumpkins. These include Green-Striped Cushaw, Jonathan, Japanese Pie Pumpkin (which isn't actually used for pies, by the way), and Tennessee Sweet Potato (which, despite its name is a squash and not a sweet potato). There is a class of wild squash (C. foetidissima) that SVBs generally ignore. I've never had SVBs attack my melons or cucumbers although some people say they do. I would assume the same practices used to control them on squashes and pumpkins could be used on other cucurbits. In my garden, the SVBs always seem to go for the yellow straightneck or crookneck squash and don't bother the zucchini types nearly as much. In the C. pepo group I usually grow Golden Zucchini, Costata Romanesco and Cocozelle and rarely have SVB issues with them. Dawn