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  • From: "Shawnee Flowerfarmer" <farmingflowers AT hotmail.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] squash vines
  • Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 19:35:29 -0500




-Wow, those temperatures are awful.  I will quit whining about the weather here...for awhile at least.

  I had thought about a trap crop planting to snag the wretched squash vine borer......Cornell University has some good research on this idea.  Plant the trap crop, observe for infestation of the villian, destroy the trap crop.  Makes good organic sense to me. 

The difficulty with this current project is that I am ethically maintaining historically correct methods which leads to some deep thinking.  So, for example, did an 1830's to 1850's gardener have the same problems with the squash vine borer that I have, and if so, what would they have done about it?  Surely that long ago gardener might have noticed that the bug prefers certain plants to others, but I haven't got any documentation to back up my assumption.  (And all sorts of pesky people may ask the question of me in the new millenium.)  Good Gardeners, as we all know, NOTICE things, but may not have found the time to record what they noticed.

I do recall seeing  Jim Crockett, of Crockett's Victory Garden, run a wire up the hole that the borer drills in the vine to impale the borer larvae.  I remember applauding when he withdrew the wire with a squirming worm stuck through.  But this method depends on quick observation and action...and I am not on site to check the vines every day.

So this season's Rouge vif Tempe pumpkins are a wash.  The fruit set was tremendous, and I had hoped that selling them would fund our next season. (Plus, our extra harvest goes to the local food pantry)  The vines are nearly dead,  and the baby pumpkins are being chewed by groundhogs.   I do imagine that this sort of problem was common in the mid 19th century. 

But, thanks for the tip, and next season, I may surround the pumpkin patch with yellow crookneck squash plants, doomed as a trap crop, and find some historically accurate way to justify the method. 

Shawnee, zone 5ish, and I will quit wailing about the awful weather. 

 


>Since squash borers seem to love summer squashes -- especially yellow
>crookneck -- maybe planting a succession of those around the perimeter of
>your pumpkins would help.
>
>Errol Castens
>Oxford, Mississippi
>Zone 7 (where the thermometer on the front porch said only 105F today, but
>the one under deck out back said 111)
>
>On Wed, August 15, 2007 6:45 pm, Shawnee Flowerfarmer said:
> >This year, my pumpkin vines have succumbed to Mr. Squash Vine Borer and
>Hungry Groundhogs; Does anyone have suggestions to fight the vine
>borer?(Must be historically accurate, so no chemicals. The garden is
>pre-1850's).
>
>
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