LadyMin's Garden

This morning I sighted a squash vine borer moth flying around my zucchini plants. It’s red body was a dead giveaway. I chased it trying to squish it between my flip flops which I had grabbed off my feet to use as a bug killer. It got away. It briefly hovered over the gord plants and then flew off.

This is what it looks like. I didn’t take this picture. I’m too busy trying to kill them to take time to photograph them. I rarely kill anything; I even put spiders back outside when they wander into the house. But this moth and the tomato hornworm are the exception.

This nasty moth lays eggs on the stems of the leaves, near the base of the plant, which hatch and turn into larvae. These will bore into the main stem and feed off the plant eventually killing it. When they are grown, they emerge from the plant, dig into the ground and hibernate until next year beginning the cycle again. This year I am not going to let it continue. At least not in my garden.

I removed what looked like a few eggs from the stems, but it is almost impossible to catch them all as they are very tiny. Now begins daily inspection of the plants for damage. If I see it’s infected, I’ll pull the plant and send it away with the recycling. Never put an infected plant in the compost pile.

Let the battle begin.

To be continued…