Squash vine borer and Cucumber beetle traps?

General Gardening
#1

Has anyone had success with SVB and/or Cukecumber traps?

I see that Peaceful Valley has pheromone traps for both (at least I think they do, their search engine is abysmal).

Some of my crops get destroyed by these little devils and I was wondering if these traps would help.

A few questions:

  1. Do they work, or will they just attract my neighbor’s bugs to my garden?
  2. Is it too late for this year? If I order today, the soonest I’ll be able to get them in the garden will be July 8th

Thanks!

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#2

I’ve tried the CB traps, they don’t seem to trap any

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#3

Had very bad experience with pheromone traps for cucumber beetles. Unless your yard is very big and you can place the trap like 100’ away from all of your plants of their interest, they will come to pheromone from your whole neighborhood. And they will not show much interest in the traps, they will be flying in numbers all over your garden and feed on your plants. And your neighbors will not understand what beetles you are talking about, just because they will not have any ,:grinning:.

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#4

As we get to the end of summer and most of my zuke plants are long dead from borers, I thought I’d mention an alternative for folks to try. Right next to my zukes I planted some Tatume squash. I now have zero zukes left, but the Tatume are basically fine. After I read more about them it appears borers don’t bother them much. They are a round squash that you can eat when young as a zucchini type vegetable or, if you miss a few before they get too big, let them turn yellow and harden up and then they are basically a winter squash. 2 for 1! The vines can get pretty long, so plan for that, although I expect they would trellis okay if you pick the squash before they get too large.

They taste great. When they are small (tennis ball size) they cook up just as soft as zucchini, but if you let them get a big bigger and a bit darker green (softball plus sized) they’ll stay firmer so work better in soups, etc. For the bigger ones I do dig out the seeds and just eat the flesh. I’m letting a few go to try them later this year as winter squash.

I was dubious when a fellow gardener gave me a few seeds, but I’ve read reviews with people saying they like them better than regular zukes and I think I might agree. I’m not recommending either of these to buy from, but here are a few links for more info for anyone interested.

http://www.rareseeds.com/tatume-squa/

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#5

I’ve used tromboncini like that

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#6

I can recommend Sunburst hybrid squash. It is very resistant to vine borers. I grew it for 4 years and it always survived and produced prolifically. I planted the other types of summer squash along with it and they always died in the middle of the summer. My seeds got old so I need to buy more next year.

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