bleach spray

[b54red]

Originally Posted by jtjmartin

Bill:

This has been - by far - the best ever season for squash thanks to your advice on:

1) bleach spray - it's worked wonders
2) sevin around the stem for vine borers

I've never had such pretty, big plants. And, they are still alive and not wilting from the borers.

My wife requested more squash this year - she's gotten it with more to come.

Jeff

P.S. Feel free to send some rain this way.

I'm glad it has helped. I don't know why so many people are so adverse to doing such a simple trick as dusting the lower stem of squash plants with Sevin to protect against SVB. Since you are only putting it on the lower stem and the mulch or soil right next to the stem you won't be consuming it and it doesn't bother the bees that love squash blossoms. The diluted bleach spray came in real handy down here this year on the squash with all the rain we had. I never had any mold on mine or SVB. I finally had to pull my plants because we were very tired of squash and the plants had gotten huge, taking over too much of my garden.

I don't know if you and your wife like yellow zucchini but if you do you should try one called Butta. It makes like crazy and gets very big before any seeds develop and it tastes very similar to a yellow crookneck. It has a creamy very light yellow color that doesn't turn that dark yellow color and the skin remains very soft and thin.


I would have loved to send you some of that rain we were having a few weeks ago. Since then it has been more reasonable in the amount that we have been getting but the problem has been the frequency of light rains increasing the diseases and humidity. We only got about one and a half inches of rain in the past week but it rained at least 7 or 8 different times.

Bill