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Tomatoes 2008
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What can you do for your garden in the early spring cold? You can go on a villain hunt but for which villain? I think you should go hunting for the squash bugs that decimated your zucchini, destroyed the Hubbards and devoured the Acorn squash. Hidden away in your winter garden are the adult squash bugs waiting patiently for warm weather to return. Under boards, in wood piles, under the eaves, between the storm window and the window, in cracks around the door frames and in dozens of other small crannies and cracks the squash bug waits. So what can you do? What will protect those squash you plan to grow comes summer. Aside from hunting them down, squashing the juveniles, dropping them into a jar of water and oil to cause them to individually drown. Don’t plant your squash until June or July. Why not? As the spring warms, the adult squash bug will be roused from their winter sleep and be ready to go out to hunt. They fly out to search for their favorite plant, the squash vines. If you have not planted any in the early spring they will fly on until it finds a vine. Perhaps it is in your neighbor’s yard—if he has planted some, so the bug sets up housekeeping. The males and the females mate and she lays small round eggs on the underside of a leaf. The eggs hatch into crawlers with light colored bodies and long dark legs. When you turn over a leaf they scamper to the ground and hide in the litter. When you go away they crawl back to continue devouring the juices of the squash plant. While they are sucking the juices they are also injecting toxic substances into the cells, killing the plant tissue, causing the leaf to shrivel and die. The crawlers grow into adults and mate with their siblings and set up housekeeping with Mom and Dad. Soon the vine is a giant community of many generations of bugs, all sucking and injecting toxins. The squash vine withers and dies, now where will all the bugs go? Perhaps if you have a few plants in your yard they will try out the sweet corn, beans, dahlias or others. But this is only temporary and soon they are on the move hunting for their favorite vine. If there are none they will either keep moving or die. but if you have planted some they will settle down in your garden and repeat the performance. At this point you must resort to hand picking or to poisons. If you are squeamish about dropping the live bugs into a container of water or kerosene or other oily substance where they will drown then contact poisons are your next best choice. These poisons must actually touch the insects in order to be effective. Dusts are best because they will be more likely to reach the vulnerable parts of the bug as it goes about its business. Knowing their life cycle and feeding habits can often give you the advantage. There is the possibility that none of your neighbors have planted any early squash and your late seeded plants can go through an entire summer without any unwelcome visitors. That baked squash with marshmallows, the squash pie or custard should be worth making the effort of keeping your garden free of squash bugs. Start early, do it often and keep it up. Rewritten by Ruth Bronson from an article printed in the Garden Gate Volume V no.1 1987 02/01/2009 |