This is a public-interest archive. Personal data is pseudonymized and retained under GDPR Article 89.

Re: Zucchini

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

I'm going to try this again cause I'm not sure where my initial reply went.

Hi Rich,
I garden in NE PA (zone 5) and every year I have battled the vine borers. I
plant bush varieties and had some luck last year using two methods. First, I
watched the base of each plant very carefully for the borer's entrance. You can

find it by looking for what looks like green worm castings at the base of the
plant (borer casting). Upon finding the site I performed surgery and removed
the borer by slicing the vine and pulling out the borer. I then covered the
wound with mulch. The plant did wonderful and we had lots of zucchini. A
negative control plant was dead in two weeks. Second, I planted a second crop
of zucchini about when the control plant died (middle of July I think) these
plants produced until a heavy frost near the end of September. Both these tips
were obtained from this list last year. I believe the moth (I think its a white

moth) has a specific egg laying time in June. I used to simply plant alot and
freeze the extra for when the spring planting died. Now I plant a few and have
plenty of zucchini for the entire year.
Hope this helps, Good Luck.
Henry

Betz, Richard wrote:

> Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html
>
> Hi,
>
> Last year I planted my zucchini and they were growing great until one day
> when I noticed that they looked like they were wilting. I thought that it
> was just a lack of water but after some investigation and help from you good
> people I found that they were infested with vine borers. These things were
> disgusting, fat, white-ish grubs that were throughout the entire stems of
> all my plants. Unfortunately I only had 3 plants in the ground and I had to
> pull them all out to get rid of the borers. This year I would like to try
> zucchini again and I'm looking for any suggestions that you might have as to
> how to avoid this problem. I think I've read somewhere that if you bury the
> stem as it grows this will solve the problem. Does anyone know if this is
> true or any other tricks I can use. The wife was very upset that we had to
> buy our zucchini from the store last year, it just never seems to be as
> tasty as home grown. Thanks for any help.
>
> Rich(zone 6, Brooklyn,NY)
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> To unsubscribe, write to sqft-unsubscribe@listbot.com
> Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/


______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, write to sqft-unsubscribe@listbot.com
Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index