Quote:
Originally Posted by HudsonValley
I thought that it killed the eggs, too, that are laid around the bases of the plants. No? Anyway, I also did BT stem injections with a syringe, so hopefully I'm covered. Last year I had already lost squash plants and had replanted seeds by this date; fingers crossed!
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It's a timing issue. BT and spinosad will help
IF they're freshly applied/effective and on the plant surface consumed by the borer when it first bores into the plant. But obviously, it's easy to miss a small spot, have the spray not stick to every single place a borer could start boring, etc.
After it starts boring, you have to inject.
I spray my cucurbit plant bases with BT nearly daily or spinosad every few days once July rolls around. But I also check them them visually every day for eggs and picking them off and starting to inspect carefully for bore holes once I start seeing eggs. I haven't lost a squash plant to SVB and have only found 1 bore hole which never turned into a problem for the plant, but I only grow a few so can take the time to really stay on top of inspection.
I do suspect that I've lost cukes in the past to borers before I realized that SVBs sometimes make do with cucumber plants.
I sowed my squash very late this year, and so far I haven't seen any borer eggs at all. The plants may be too small still to give off whatever odors the borers use to find them, or maybe the borer emergence is delayed. But a nice side effect is that there isn't much difficulty in inspecting the bases because the plants are still small and the bases are still easy to access. A disadvantage is squash envy.