I did a little experiment. I noticed a bunch of squash bugs on my zucchini plant earlier this week. I decided to NOT do anything about it, just to see if a natural predator would come along and clean up the mess for me. Turns out these critters are lethal! In a few short days my healthy cucubrit was dead. Lesson learned! Next time I’ll know to act quickly to save the plant.
Here is what remains of the zucchini plant:
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I too have these nasty little pest and a local farmer in Coppell told me to use bay leaves to combat them. You can either grind them up and spread them around the base of the plant or take the leaves and wrap them around the base. By the time I found out this way to control them my squash was dead…but next year watch out.
I too live in North Texas and I stared a video gardening blog this year that you might be interested in viewing here is the URL: http://katydidgarden.wordpress.com/