Tomatoville® Gardening Forums - View Single Post - Squash Bugs and Squash Vine Borers

brownrexx · August 27, 2016

Please feel free to ask them if injections of bt into the squash stem are effective. I am not a big Facebook user.

There are lots of reliable postings online that say it does work. Here is one of them, but there are many more and I have seen firsthand that it does work in my garden. bt kills caterpillars and larvae so it is natural to assume that coating the interior stem tissue with bt will kill the SVB larvae that are eating it. I have also heard that spinosad injections will work but I have not tried them.

http://articles.extension.org/pages/...arming-systems

Here is an excerpt if you do not want to read the entire thing.

Stem injections of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) are frequently recommended for squash vine borer management, especially for organic gardeners. Trials in South Carolina compared spray application and stem injection of commercial formulations of Bt with a conventional insecticide and an untreated control (Canhilal and Carner, 2007). The injection and spray application methods produced similar results, and the Bt treatments provided control similar to that of the conventional insecticide.

I am an organic gardener so I prefer this to application of conventional pesticides. Since the results are similar, why add pesticides to your plants?

August 27, 2016	#27
brownrexx Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2016 Location: Southeastern PA Posts: 1,420	Please feel free to ask them if injections of bt into the squash stem are effective. I am not a big Facebook user. There are lots of reliable postings online that say it does work. Here is one of them, but there are many more and I have seen firsthand that it does work in my garden. bt kills caterpillars and larvae so it is natural to assume that coating the interior stem tissue with bt will kill the SVB larvae that are eating it. I have also heard that spinosad injections will work but I have not tried them. http://articles.extension.org/pages/...arming-systems Here is an excerpt if you do not want to read the entire thing. Stem injections of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) are frequently recommended for squash vine borer management, especially for organic gardeners. Trials in South Carolina compared spray application and stem injection of commercial formulations of Bt with a conventional insecticide and an untreated control (Canhilal and Carner, 2007). The injection and spray application methods produced similar results, and the Bt treatments provided control similar to that of the conventional insecticide. I am an organic gardener so I prefer this to application of conventional pesticides. Since the results are similar, why add pesticides to your plants? Last edited by brownrexx; August 27, 2016 at 11:39 AM.