Squash Vine Borers

Uh-Oh

I was away from the garden most of the weekend due to work commitments (Damn the man! The annual internal audit is upon me…..)

When I came home this evening Mrs C said the 3 squash plants wilted badly this afternoon so I went out to inspect. I was hoping that I wouldn’t find what I already knew it was- Squash Vine Borers.

Unfortunately, the signs were there on all three- the bases had been bored into noticeably and in 2 cases the cheesy “frass” was accumulated at the holes. If you haven’t figured out what frass is yet, click here.  (Sidebar: Why can’t we just call all sh*t “sh*t”? Does somebody get paid for coming up with new and different names for it?)

Even though the plants are probably too damaged to survive, I decided to try and surgically remove the grubs by slitting open the vine longways and physically removing the invaders. This can actually work if you catch them early enough; even if it doesn’t work there is some modest satisfaction to be gained in destroying the destroyers.

I took a mug shot of one of the guilty before sending him to walk down the green mile and have graciously used the clickable thumbnail format instead of embedding the full sized picture.   DO NOT open this picture if you are planning on eating cheese grits or anything similar in the next 48 hours.   Consider yourself warned.

AND…..

If anyone was wondering, frass smells like sh*t too.