Squash Ailments

Healthy squash plants are prolific producers, as any true gardener knows.  In the height of their season, it is almost impossible to give these vegetables away!!  To ensure your plants stay healthy, here are a few tips on some everyday ailments that afflict these plants.

The squash vine borer (Melittia cucurbitae), is a nasty little pest that burrows into the stem of the plant.  Though the plant sometimes survives, it is usually weakened, and it may be best to remove it from the garden and replace it with a healthier one.

Damage from the squash vine borer looks like this:

Powdery mildew is a fungal disease commonly seen on squash crops throughout the southeast.  It looks like this:

I have had some success with a homemade mixture of baking soda, water, and dish detergent.  I sprayed this on my plants once every three days until the white spores were no longer visible.  This mixture can be used once a week as a preventative measure against this plant disease.  The concentration I used was : 4 tsp. baking soda per 1 gal water with a squirt of dish washing liquid to help it stick to the leaves.  Shake well before use and spray onto the upper and lower surfaces of the plant’s leaves.

DID YOU KNOW?  Squash plants have both male and female flowers.  The male flowers are held up on long thin stalks, whereas the female flowers are closer to the plant and produce a small fruit at the base of the flower.  If the female flower is not fertilized, that infant fruit will die and fall off.  Many people mistake that as symptomatic of a disease or nutrient deficiency, but it is really a problem with fertilization.  If you don’t have many plants blooming at the same time, it is easy for pollinators to miss some of the female flowers.  I have used a Q-tip to manually transfer the bright yellow pollen from male to female flowers.  Gently swab the interior of the male flower and then dab the pollen onto the central part of the female flower.  It works!!

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