When I was pruning the squash back, the leaves were huge and glossy and I saw little evidence of bug pressure. But on Friday when my helper friend was doing the foliar and milk spraying, he was finding LOTS of eggs.
The squash has gotten so big and entwined it’s hard to properly spray it. He obviously missed this leaf last week as it has the powdery mildew on it. But more importantly, it has multiple spots of eggs. The bugs tend to lay on the underside to keep the eggs out of sight of predators.
But there were so many eggs, we were finding them on top too.
This is the culprit. My helper friend will squish them if he finds them. He missed this one.
One can, of course, spray them, but I’ve never done that. I’ll use a piece of cheap duct tape and lift the eggs off that way. It’s time consuming turning over all the leaves, and I won’t be able to reach the center of the mass. So I’ll just go for reducing the population as much as I can.
The larva chew up the leaves and eventually the plant succumbs. I’m hoping between getting eggs and having such healthy plants, they will survive and I’ll get squash.
Oh wow! I've never seen so many eggs! That's a great tip with the duct tape. For the mildew, so you use a mixture of water and milk?
yes, 10:1 water: milk. It has to be raw milk. I let it stand and skim the cream off, so the screen on the sprayer doesn't plug up.
We can't get raw milk here. Unhomogenised is the closest we can get to it.
You can try it with store bought, but the enzymes etc will be missing...
Wow! You have a lot of patience and energy! We had too many pests; they ate all my four rose bushes. I gave up all the roses! 🙀😂
Didn't realize how lucky I was: Around here there is no animal touching my pumkin or squash.
I hope you can solve the problem.
Sounds like all the rain has caused problems. It has been so hot and dry here there hasn't been any bugs on my plants save the kale. Hopefully you can get them under control.