Catherinet, I've used cattle panels in an arch for several years for my beans, and they have done well on them--I'm not sure what the problem may be with yours. It's my favorite way to grow the beans now, because the way most of them are left hanging down inside the arch makes them so easy to pick, and you get to pick them in the shade! I tried teepees, but couldn't find the beans in the tangle towards the top. THis year I'm going to try growing some additional beans on some extra CRW tomato cages, to save on space. That worked very well with sugar snap peas and cucumbers last year. I've got asparagus bean seeds from Baker Creek (www.rareseeds.com http://rareseeds.com/seeds/Long-Beans) and larger quantities from Harvest Moon Seeds (www.felcopruners.net http://www.felcopruners.net/index.php/cPath/146_153). You can also find them called yard long beans or just long beans Leigh Here is a link that might be useful: Baker Creek Long Beans

We just found our crop infested with squash bugs. This being our first crop we were not familiar with these pests. After doing lots of research on them and seeing what we could do we chose to try something organic and we took the time to comb the plants first and find them. When we did we had a small bowl of water with a small amount of dish soap in it and placed the bug in the bowl (where they drowned). As for the eggs we used tape and pulled them off the leafs that way. However to our surprise those boogers were on both sides of the leaves. So we had to go over it again. Then we watered the plants and what we missed came to the top to dry. And we caught them as well and drowned them. We caught today 33 adults and some 400-500 eggs (no exaggeration). We will be doing this daily for the next couple weeks. Then we will be moving our crop next year to another area and take precautions from the beginning. Making sure to plant things around them that repel the SB. Good luck with these things.

Well we got invaded by SVB's unfortunately. I've definitely lost 1 Jack-O-Lantern vine and 1 Acorn squash vine, and probably 1 more Acorn, 2 more Jack's and possibly 2 Caspers to these things. Next year I'm definitely covering these plants, as we checked them nearly every day and somehow missed enough eggs to hatch 30+ SVBs, and these things take 7-15 days to hatch! What I tried to do was slicing the vines open just enough to stick some tweezers in there to remove the SVB grubs. I then smashed them and fed them to the fire ants in the yard. Made me feel better to watch them get carried down in to the mound, knowing they'll get eaten the way they've destroyed my plants. I took some pantyhose and cut them in small strips and tied them around the spots I cut open to try and "suture" the plant's wounds back together in a last-ditch effort to hope the plant survives.

George, I agree! Even though summer squash can be allowed to mature to the hard, winter-squash like stage, I don't really like them that way. I suppose that's the reason some squash traditionally are grown for use as summer (immature) squash and others as winter (mature) squash. Clearly people who preceded us by generations figured out which ones are best at whichever stage. Amy! I cannot believe you didn't share that squash with your DH! Lol. Those are odd words coming from me considering I eat SunGolds endlessly in the garden as 'garden Gatorade' for weeks before there's enough left over at the end of the day to carry up to the house to share with other people. Tim has no idea that the SunGolds mature in 55-60 days because none of them make it to the house that first few weeks. To the gardener go the spoils.... Dawn