Squash Bugs: How to Battle These Nasty Pests in the Garden!

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Hi everybody. It’s Carrie with seed to spoon. I don’t know about you all, but we have been battling the squash bug and they are our nemesis. So I thought I would take a few minutes today to go over our top tips and tricks for both prevention and how to get rid of them.

So the very first year we grew squash in our yard. We had fantastic luck, never once saw a squash bug in sight. It was amazing. We. So many different zucchini and squashes, it was, it was great. And then the second year the squash bugs found us. So the war was on with them and they, man, once they get in there and they get established, they can be really difficult to control.

So it is super important to make sure that you are staying on top of it and know what you’re looking for and get rid of them. As soon as you see. So, first of all, what you’re gonna be looking for are on the underside of your squash leaves. There’s like little clusters of eggs and these are squash bug eggs.

And if you see them at this stage, that’s great. Get rid of them at that a at that stage. So at that point, if you see those, you’ll go through a really easy way to go about doing this is just to take some thick tape and just go up and stick it up to them and pull them all off that way. Super easy. Maybe even like a lint brush roller, things like that.

It really easy to handle them. And at that stage, and then next thing that you’ll be looking for are the nymph stage. So this is when they just hatch out of their eggs. They’re little baby squash bugs. These ones are definitely a little harder, cuz they’re moving around. But again, you want to be getting rid of these as much as possible too.

And then again, of course, if you see the adults, those ones, you definitely need to get rid. The best thing to do is prevention for squash bugs. So like I already talked about just looking out for them, looking at the underside of the leaves. We make this a daily thing. So we come outside and look underneath our squash leaves and see if we see any eggs, any signs of activity.

Things like that. And you won’t necessarily know that you have an issue until it’s too late. So it’s really important to make sure that you stay on top of it. And you’re looking every day or two, and making sure that you can find these bad guys. But if you do find them, I usually carry a bucket of soapy water with me.

So you can just handpick toss ’em in there. And one thing we’ve been doing a lot of this year to try and prevent them from getting out of control is a lot of companion planting. Now there are a bunch of different plants that are really good to deter the squash bugs. So there’s things like di parsley.

Mint is another one. That’s really good, but make sure with mint that you put it in its own little container. I try to line little tiny, like three gallon smart pots with mint around my squash plants. Also things like onions, garlic, strong scents. Marigold, nasturtiums, things like that. You can go about planting around your squashes and for more about companion planting, I’ll link to a video that I made this year about all of the best companion plants and what they do to help the squash out, all for squash.

So I will link to that video. So once you see an issue though, hand picking is going to be your number one go-to to handle these squash bugs. And like I said, carry around a bucket of soapy water. If you are having trouble finding them, or if you have a really large squash plant, something you can do is spray the plant down with some water.

And these squash bugs will all climb to the top and you will, um, be able to grab them a lot faster and easier. Also, if you have any kids hanging around, they love to go pest, hunting in the garden with me and they get a quarter for each pest that they find. So they love going to work out there. There are also beneficial that you can put to work things like the praying mantis.

These guys go around and hunt these squash bugs. So they are really good to have around and you can really encourage them to be in your garden. And we have a bunch of tips and tricks within our app. If you didn’t know, we have a beneficial section and within the app, and it’ll talk all about how to go about encouraging them.

There are also things like garlic sprays that you can use and Neme oil can also be effective too, but it’ll only be effective really for those Nim stages. Once they get to the adult size, not much in the, in the form of sprays or anything like that, we’ll do much to get to them. And also just a word of warning for the Neem oil too.

If you decide to use that, make sure that you are using it when you have temperatures below 90 degrees, or you could possibly risk suffocating your plant. And that’s definitely not something that you wanna do. So make sure that the temperatures are good before you use something like that. So I hope some of these tips and tricks have helped you to manage those squash bugs.

If you are struggling with your squash plants and your squash plant just suddenly died on you, and you did not see any of these squash bugs, it’s possible that you had these squash vine boar instead, which is different. So stay tuned for my next video to see how to handle that. Let me know if you all have any other questions or comments, leave him in the comment section down below, and I will get back with you and good luck.

Squash, bug hunting, everybody.