Bye Bye Squash

I have to admit, I've reached the point where I look at all my unread bloglines and think to myself, don't you people have something better to do?? All this posting?? Every day??? I guess that means I either need to Mark All Read or unsubscribe to a few.

This week has been a bad gardening week. My squash was looking great.


Pretty blossoms, and some fruit. I finally had a few honeybees visiting. They had been a little scarce until recently and I was getting worried about the reported die off.

Back to the squash. I came outside and saw the zucchini lying over.

Then I examined the stems.

The stems on the squash were looking a little strange, but the zucchini,

Ewww. You can't see the actual pest, the squash vine borer, in the photo.  That's a rolypoly.  The actual pest looks like a giant maggot. I read some advice that said to slit the stems with a knife and take them out, but I couldn't do it without destroying the plants, they were too far gone.

I ripped them out and planted more seeds. I'm going to try and keep a better watch next time. The prevention advice seems to go the spectrum from spray! (which I want to avoid) to wrap the stems with foil and use diotomaceous earth, etc.

I'm going out of town again next week to stay with my folks. I love to visit their town and play tourist with the kids. It's the same place where I went to high school and college but it's changed a lot since I lived there 20 years ago. I've got a cute crochet project going and I hope to finish it while away next week.


Have a good week.