I am a commercial grower of both zucchini, summer squash and lots of winter squash.
I've been fortunate in that we have never had much of a squash vine borer problem so we don't even look for them.
We are starting to get a bit of a build-up of squash bugs (those gray shield bugs) but for the most part they don't do enough damage to bother with them.
The Cucumber beetles tho are my big problem. Both the striped and spotted types. If they find the newly germinated squash plants they can eat the plants to death. We've lost thousands of feet of row to those boogers. For years we would spray Sevin with mediocre results. A couple of years ago Hubby found an antique duster in a junk store. Since then he's used the Sevin Dust and THAT seems to work well against them.
My farmers market leans rather heavily to Organic. While we are not Organic, we don't use much of any chemicals most years. Most of the customers that ask, are OK with the fact that what we use is NOT systemic and is put on when the plants are only at the 2-3 leaf stage, long before there are even any flowers, let alone fruit.
Carol
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