Was just out after the rain both picking and eating small tomatoes. The cherry and grape types are starting up. I picked an entire quart full, I know cause I put them in those quart plastic containers that you get deli salads in. And that does not count the ones I ate as I was picking!

These were Sungolds, Sugery, Sweet Million and Juliets.

Yummy!

About splitting the stems...do you have the stomach to look for the worm? If so, carefully slit the stem from the soil level up to where it feels solid. Then gently pry apart the stem watching for a white, fairly large worm and then remove or crush it. But I think if you injected with Spinosad you probably don't have to do that so you wouldn't have to ound the soil over the stems. You only do that over the wounded stem.

The stems are wounded. The stems are a blackened mess with frass holes all over. The stems on those two I call "dead" don't look anything like a healthy squash stem. And yes, I have the stomach to look for the grubs.

I saw a SVB moth again today. She was laying eggs right at the base of the stem at the soil line. In fact under the soil line. So when I was looking for eggs, I probably was looking too high up on the plant.

This is really, really a learning year for me. I honestly never thought I would have SVB. But I do and if I can figgure out how to keep the plants clean of them all would be good.

At this stage I no longer care about those older bad squash plants. I don't regard them as anything other than a research project on SVB at this point. Seeing what works or not essentially.

I wonder what diluted household ammonia would do to those eggs below the soil line. Squirting the stems every few days might be easy insurance. And you might learn whether the smell of ammonia repels or attracts SVB and other pests.

There might be a certain dilution that would not harm the plant stem, but would prevent the eggs from hatching.

I figure that even if ammonia kills some good fungi in a small pinch of soil, it will dilute out in the very first watering and revert to being simple plant food.

I wouldn't know how much of the amonia to use.

I killed a SVB moth when I was out there just now. It made the mistake of landing on a squash leaf so I squished it. The Neem doesn't seem to repel them though as those plants are drenched in Neem.

This article suggests one cup of household ammonia per quart for repelling random insects - I don't know, either. Plus maybe a drop of dish-washing soap. Is there such a thing as soap anymore, or is it all detergent?

But I'm just speculating, I don't really know if it's any good against your moths or the eggs or the borers.

I wonder if little paper collars sitting on the ground and encircling the stems would deter any moths? Or a little pile of gravel or grit around each stem.

No, already tried the aluminum foil collars.Only makes things worse./

That's a real bummer. I wonder if DE would work?

I wrapped my tomato cage bottoms with floating row cover to hopefully keep out critters from eating my tomatoes. I actually saw a bunny run from the tomatoes while I was doing this so now I'm almost positive it's rabbit damage. The think is, there is so much tall grass near the tomato row we couldn't even see the rabbits if we wanted to. And my celosia row is mixed in with that grass! Aaarrggghhh! I need desperately to weed and I just have not been able to get to it! I guess that row will be my priority. I was going to do my strawberries because I cannot even see the strawberries!

Strawberry rows

Too much rain for DE I think. Plus pots watered each day. DE would just float away.

Arlene, so sorry you have all those destructive bunnies. I am sure the weed cover for them doesn't help things.

Oh yeah, rain. DE won't do any good. Oh my. There's got to be something. I'm kind of surprised the injections didn't work.

DH is going to just mow down a bunch of grass. I don't think it will hurt the strawberries and if I can at least get in between the rows, even though there is landscape fabric, the grass is growing right through it. I just don't have enough garden hours to catch up. At least mowing will delay and reseeding.

Good idea on the mowing.

The injections might be working, I just can't tell.

Over the weekend I will go get another bag of potting mix to use to put over some of my zucchinis. Nothing looks worse today so we will see. All second crop plants looking good. Of course my first crop looked great until the next morning one day they looked dead! Cautiously thinking (and certainly hoping) that things might go well in the zucchini and squash patch.

Of my original 5 plants all of which were hit by SVB, the two yellow zucchini plants look pretty good. Much better than they have in days. The three original green zucchini plants all look really bad. And each day it seems to be a different plant of the three that looks the worse.

My Caserta zuc seedlings have sprouted and are up. All six seeds came up. So as they get big enough to transplant I just might pull those other three and re use the pots for a new crop.

Rita, here are a couple of pictures of the squash I split the stems on. Just picked two more Butterstick today and one plant even has new growth!





And just so you can see my entire garden is not all grass!




Purple Marconi pepper

Gypsy peppers finally starting to turn red!

Arlene, your pepper plants look wonderful. Much better than most of mine do. And the tomatoes look good also. So many green fruits. Me too on the lots and lots of green tomatoes on my plants.

On the SVB, gross looking stems but not as bad as mine look, At least not as bad as three of my oldest plants. I haven't done anything yet, hoping they are dead in there. I do need to look inside those three plants I think. Don't see no new frass anywhere this evening on my inspection. Time will tell.

Remember how tiny my peppers were when I transplanted them? You could hardly see a couple of them! still, it does seem to be taking a long time for them to mature. I know, when they start we'll be sick of them soon enough!

Tomatoes are loaded but between the rabbits and now rotting on the vines I'm not sure how many we'll get. Hd some for dinner tonight and they were so good, very acidic! Of course since we haven't been selling any I didn't keep track of which ones are which but I can guess from a few. The best one I think was a Zogola. Then Stump of the world, just a tiny bit sweeter.

We picked some tomatoes today for Saturday's market and we're trying to be careful about marking them. Should have quite a few more tomorrow too.

So hopefully your SVB problem is solved! I did have to pull out another zucchini today and I squashed some squash bugs but we are having more of a problem with leaf footed bug. They nibble on everything!

I would never say it is solved as one never knows when another SVB moth might appear. So not solved but hopefully managed.

Actually all those sickly zucchini look to be in recovery mode this morning. New growth and new leaves starting. Not wilted either today. I am very encouraged! And remember. it can't be because of any new roots the way I grow them. Still, I am wondering if these plants are far too stressed to be productive in this state. We will see.

I dunno. Peppers always seem to take a very long time to me. Home grown tomatoes are always the best, hopefully yours do well now.

OK, Arlene I told you those squash stems of mine are worse than yours are. I took pictures of those three original zucchini plant stems. These are my three first green zucs that are gonners. Stems are cracked and really a mess., But no new frass.





Part of their problem was that they had come down with horrible powdery mildew more than a week before I found the borers. Read that you should cut off affected leaves. Big mistake. I did but it did not help. Mildew kept spreading. So it took three times of spraying with the Neem to stop/control the mildew. Now I just spray all the squash with the Neem.

These two plants are my original two yellow zucchinis. Also hit badly by borers but stems are in ok shape and they are recovering nicely. Nice new green growth coming.



Here is one of my my new yellow squash called Golden Egg. You can see a tiny fruit and blossom starting to form.



Here are some of my Elite Zucchini plants.




This is Cavilli, both plants and fruits comming.



This monster of a plant is Trivoli Spagetti Squash. The plant is so big it takes up the entire 20 inch pot already. It has multiple stems and fruits set already.



And here are my new little Caserta Zucchini seedlings.

Whoa! But maybe they look worse because of all the leaf stumps
Looks like you have plenty of other squash though so if you can get a handle on the SVB you should be having a lot of squash. All the other plants look great. I really like those towers too!

The towers I got from Gardeners supply and ment to be eggplant and pepper supports. I have them on my eggplants now also.

I think it is surprising that considering the looks of the stems that the plants have any leaves left. But really I am just planning to pull and trash those three plants. The only reason they are still there is because I am watching them to make sure that I killed the borers. And because the seedlings are too small to transplant.

Gotcha! Looks like the towers work especially well with your pots. I don't have my eggplant staked or FW. I have on little eggplant. Same as peppers, really late!