Prepare for battle. Squash borers have arrived!

I'm going to try injecting BTK into the stems this year of any holes I find to see if this will work. That and weekly spraying of insecticidal soap.

I guess I have been lucky (nock on wood), haven't had that problem, of course I hammer my garden with Sevin maybe that keeps them away?

Never had a problem with squash, but my my eggplant leaves are full of holes.

Sevin won't touch em. You have to use a systemic pesticide to kill them. The larvae live inside the stems and eat their way through it, killing the plant. External pesticide applications have little to no effect on them, unless you spray regularly around the base of the plant to kill the adults before they can bore into the stem and lay eggs. And when you notice the leaves beginning to wilt down, it's already too late. I'm trying to remember the systemic pesticide that I used to apply when I was growing and selling cucurbits. You have to wait "x" amount of days after application before you can consume the vegetable, though. It's a tradeoff. Risk your crop or save your crop and risk eating residual pesticide if you don't follow application instructions.

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I'm going to try injecting BTK into the stems this year of any holes I find to see if this will work. That and weekly spraying of insecticidal soap.

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Too late by then. Cut off that stem and burn it. If the leaves have started to wilt, forget trying to save it. The larvae are eating the plant from inside the stem. Anything you spray on the outside of the plant will have ZERO effect.

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One way is to take a shallow pan, paint it yellow and fill it with water/Dawn solution

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I heard that this works with stink bugs as well. Thanks for the tips.

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I heard that this works with stink bugs as well. Thanks for the tips.

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I've had stink bugs (squash bugs) out the ying yang for the last two years. I fight em all winter long, too. They like to hide around the base of the squash, cucumber, and melon vine. I spray the dickens out of that part of the plant and ground with permethrin and carboryl (Sevin). That usually keeps their numbers in check around the plants. But it won't do squat for squash vine borers. If you've only got a couple of plants, it's a whole lot easier to take care of them. Good luck! Hope I've been able to help.

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Either that or I will have to just pitch the squash for the next three weeks.

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I guess it depends on the kind of vegetable damage you currently are experiencing? One strategy is to go ahead and treat your current plants now and sacrifice their production. However...you will be killing this generation of squash vine borers and making the next crop much more productive. Squash grows rapidly and with the long growing season you have down there, you can still raise more squash than you can eat!

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I never had these Satan spawn until last year.

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And you will have them for a long time now. I never had tater bugs until I planted taters. But at least you now have a couple of ways to keep them under manageable control!