Hello from South Carolina

[Benjy136]

I was told this was a good site for gardening information by Brianworm. I've been an organic gardener for over 50 years, now. I have never liked squash, and never grew it til I found someone who could fix it where I'd like it. Great! My first squash plants (yellow crookneck) have put out like bandits. All of a sudden the leaves die on three of my babies. Turning to my old books I go to my good-looking babies and find the tell-tale holes in the stems with borer excrenent, take out my knife and make the slits to remove the boogers. 5 in one plant. I talked to Brianworm and he reccomended this site for controls. Anything as long as it is organic and won'thurt the worms and good bugs...HELP, please.

lol Benjy136

[eco4560]

Don't know the specific answer but the approach is to find out what eats them and encourage the predators to move in. The other approach is to make your soil as healthy as you can as stronger plants are more resistant to attack - but if you have been doing organics for 50 years you probably have pretty good soil.

[Grahame]

but if you have been doing organics for 50 years you probably have pretty good soil.

There is also such a thing as 'too good'

[Benjy136]

I've been into OG for 50 yrs., but this garden was a wormless piece of scrub oak when I got here 5 years ago. Its been babied and fed organic material since I dug the stumps out and tilled it up to mix the six-inch deep sand and the clay underbelly. Each year the crops are healthier, the ants are fewer, the birds and "good" bugs are more abundant, the soil doesn't dry out as fast, but, probably because of all the organic material on the surface (wheat straw, rabbit and horse poop and compost) I'm still having a problem with slugs and snails in spite of the 250 pounds of diatomatious earth I have added during the past 5 yrs. I've been fairly tolerant with them until I planted strawberries last year. Between the slugs, the millipeds and the rabbits I am left with a good handful of nice berries daily out of a 40' X 4' row. My potatoes, Beans, peas, fennel, cukes, mellons,peppers, Asparagus, kiwis, fennel, tomatoes (until July, when they'll get the late blight common to this area), grapes, celery, cabbage, collards, lettuce and okra all are doing fine but never having grown it before because I never liked it, squash is new to my garden. When I saw a nice healthy leaf turning brown I had no Idea that a larva was eating my plant from the inside out. Dusting off one of my old books, I found the culpret and commenced to examine all the squash plants. I was exasperated making stem-slits, digging out larvae and even cutting dying leaves at their base and finding larvae in their stems. I dusted with DE and Dipel (bacillus) but my newer transplants still got the boogers, or the other way arround.
By the way, my garden spot is 75ft. X 60ft. My Kiwis are bearing heavily for the first crop since I planted them four and a half yrs. ago.
Thank you for your interest

Benjy

[farmerd]

welcome from a fellow sc'er

[Benjy136]

Farmred:

Looking at your profile, it seems you are around 35 to forty miles from me. I'm just outside Lexington, almost into Gilbert. I don't have a farm. Just a couple acres and a small 60' by 75' garden. Its not much, but, given a decent growing season, we put up enough not to starve through the winter. Beans are a good starting crop, as they help in fixing the elements in the soil that other crops love. This year I only planted one 60' row of bush beans so I woulden't have to trellis them. I just picked the last of my peas from the row next to the beans that are still producing vigorously and will, after worm-casting amendment to the pea row, plant some Kentucky Wonder beans for the pea trellises. I don't think its too late for them. I'm curious. What materials do you have on the propperty for dwelling construction? And how far along are you? Just an old timer's curiousity. About 65 years ago My Dad brought us two older boys up to the Catskills. We brought nothing but a double-bitted axe, a two-man crosscut saw, a lantern and coal oil, a sheet-tent sewn by my mother and enough staples to last a week. We ate blackberries, apples, puffballs, wild leeks and whatever else the 17 acres afforded and built a log cabin large enough to house us, my mother, my sister and two younger brothers. We left Brooklyn as soon as school was out and brought the rest of the family up before the first snows. It was hard work, but I look back with a certain amount of pride and satisfaction. I could go on, but I've probably taken up enough of your time. lol
Benjy