Seems to me there is not much one can do to avoid the SVB moths coming around. What I have found is if I can get my squash plants in ground early enough that they grow to a decent size before the arrival of the moths the plants do fine. But the few plants that stay small or I get in ground too late and stay smaller quickly die before making any fruit or any significant amount of fruit.

Also I never compost squash plants. I bag them up and put them out for trash pickup as I want to get any leftover borers out of the garden.

Linda, there's a lot of information available on line (Google "vine borers") that will give you a more in-depth response that I could give here. I understand the moths are only around for a limited period of time. In some locals there are two separate periods when they lay their eggs. We plan on starting our squash under row covers to discourage them until the threat is past. Last year we even had the borers in our cucumbers. We managed to get rid of most of them and had a fairly decent crop. And, like Rita mentioned, don't compost the plants. We burn ours.

I've never had a problem with the SVB (knock on wood), but was going to suggest using row covers, as Mac said; you might need to hand pollinate the flowers in that case, though.

We hand pollinated our winter squash last year since we have very few honeybees. Had great success, using a q-tip. Easy to do but you have to get up early before all the male flowers close.

I'll transplant them tomorrow and see if that helps them. They get plenty of light but the lid was on when the sprouted and they shot up faster than I realized so they got spindly right off the bat. The peppers took their time growing so I was able to avoid that with them. They'll be stuck back in the house again for awhile now since we have temps dropping down to the 20s at night for about a week.

I have tried the hand pollinated method with Q-tips on squash. Yup, works great. But I have so many squash plants usually planted here that I simply do count on the bees to do their work. I get plenty of squashes so it must be working.

I suppose we should move the squash discussion to a new thread. We've sort of hijacked the heirloom tomato topic.

At least they are all edibles!!

Newyorkrita said:

At least they are all edibles!!

Yes they are .

McCannon said:Linda, there's a lot of information available on line (Google "vine borers") that will give you a more in-depth response that I could give here. I understand the moths are only around for a limited period of time. In some locals there are two separate periods when they lay their eggs. We plan on starting our squash under row covers to discourage them until the threat is past. Last year we even had the borers in our cucumbers. We managed to get rid of most of them and had a fairly decent crop. And, like RitIa mentioned, don't compost the plants. e burn ours.

Thanks @McCannon.....I will try row covers. In the past, I've tried wrapping the stems as someone has recommended. It's a little tricker for me as I grow everything in Earthboxes. But I will see what I can do with row covers--I have the material....just need to figure out how to make it work with EBs.

Linda, here's a little information on vine borers, with some tips on what to look for. I'm not familiar with Earthboxes, but you may be able to make supports for row cover out of stiff wire and clip the row cover material around the edge of your Earthbox. Once the danger period has passed you can remove the row cover. I hope that works for you. Those borers really do a lot of damage.

Covered Earthboxes....full of spinach...no moths....

@Gymgirl, that should answer @mom2goldens question about how to secure the row cover. Thanks .

@gymgirl

Here's the link to how to bend the PVC A-frames. I just bought some plywood to make a jig for my 4x8' raised beds.

The ones in the pic above span my 18" x 15' bed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I ran across a mention of a way to clean tomato seeds in 35 minutes with "Sani-Scrub", but the links had expired. Has anyone else copied this information or tried the cleaning method?

I use the old fashioned Fermentation method.

Sani-Scrub is a heavy duty hand cleaner made up of mostly water, surfactant and silica, plus moisturizers and odorants (for nice smelling hands). Lava hand cleaner is sort of like that with less pumice. There are cleansers with walnut shell chips plus all the soap ingredients. The MSDS says it is non-toxic.

Tri-sodium phosphate has also been used as a seed cleaner.

I am with Rita, I use the fermentation method to kill any pathogens and clean seeds. Soap or other surface cleansers may work OK, but I like the stinky method.

😎😎😎