Fool the borers?
I saw somewhere in a catalog some kind of shiny ground cover cloth. It's supposed to "repel" squash bugs as the shiny surface reflects the sunlight and confuses the vine borer moth. Supposedly. When I mentioned it, my sister wondered if one of those $1 space blankets would work. Ah ha!
So that will be one of the experiments in the never ending quest to defeat vine borers. Put a slit in the space blanket to slide it around the stem (the plants are already coming up) and pin it to the soil.
Last year a light row cover worked pretty well on one zucchini until it got way too big and pushed its way out of the cover. That's when the first borer damage showed up. At least I got a few zukes!
|