For what seems like a VERY long time I have been fighting my nemesis; the Squash Vine Borer. If you have not yet met this villain then consider yourself lucky. It’s a moth that lays its eggs at the base of your squash plant. Then when you are sleeping that egg hatches and bores into the plant. Then that alien offspring eats your plant from the inside out! This is wrong on soo many different levels!

So picture yourself walking out to check on your yellow squash and zucchini. They are just starting to produce nicely. You have done everything right. You have prepared the bed. You have fertilized. You have watered faithfully. Then one day they are just laying there dead, wilted and completely beyond help. It is like getting a garden gut punch!

So when I say, I have been fighting this alien offspring, I mean I have been in the trenches for years! I have tried everything to defeat this monster! Well, everything that would leave my veggies organic at least. This is the whole reason I started this after all, to provide fresh organic food for my family. Now I have another VERY compelling reason; I keep bees. Not only do I want my bees to be healthy and strong(because bees have a lot going against them now days), but that golden honey will sweeten our teas and toast and all matter of things.

Because I garden in my front yard, unfortunately, my defeat has been very public. My neighbors have seen me dashing around madly with a fly swatter, cackling crazily with a syringe filled with Bt. I have been seen with a scalpel doing surgery to remove this alien from the stems of each plant, under the hot Texas sun with sweat dripping into every major body crevice. It has been eye-catching and humiliating. My defeat has not been pretty; as the squash vine borer eats my lunch, literally, every Summer.

I am sooo tired of fighting the good fight! I am exhausted!

So this year I took a different approach. I planted varieties that were resistant to the Squash Vine Borer and it worked! So I say to my nemesis, “In your face, you wicked winged creature bearing destruction in your wake! Bring it!”

Here is a video explaining the varieties I used this year. I know, if you have been fighting the good fight, that you are really going get  A LOT OF SATISFACTION out of this. From one soldier to another, “Let’s do this!”