Things You'll Need:
- A sharp knife
- Rich soil or compost
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Step 1
Telltale signs of the Squash BorerRECOGNIZE A SQUASH VINE BORER INFESTATION: The telltale signs of squash vine borer infestation include: stems which suddenly wilt and darken in color; squash on the vine suddenly stop growing and the plant's production stagnates; near the base of the stem, you see a build-up of what looks like orange sawdust (this is squash borer excrement)! Remember, squash borers will infest any vegie with a wide cylindrical stem, and are especially common in squash, pumpkins, and occasionally cucumbers.
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Step 2
GET RID OF THOSE BORERS!: Ok, the bad news is you have squash vine borers. The good news is you can get rid of them! Simply take a sharp knife and slit open the squash at the place where borer excrement can be observed. Continue extending the cut up through the base of the stem until you find the borer - a white grub like the one you see pictured above. Use your knife to pull it out. If it's hard to get to, sometimes simply poking the borer is enough to coax it to crawl out on its own. Kill the borer by cutting it in half or crushing it with a stone. It is possible for multiple borers to infest a single plant, so keep exploring the stem until you reach a point where the center of the stem is green and shows no sign of borer infestation.
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Step 3
SAVE THE PLANT: The earlier you remove the borers, the greater your chance of saving the plant. However, many garden plants are remarkably resilient, so even if you have had to slice open most of the stem, there's still a chance that your plant will live to sprout another gourd. To save the plant, use a nutrient rich soil or compost to bury it so that the soil sits at least one inch higher than your highest cut mark. With luck, the plant will begin producing new roots from the buried stem. During the rooting period, water your plants generously, as they will have trouble transporting water through the opened stem.
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Step 4
The Squash Vine Borer MothKEEP BORERS AWAY IN THE FUTURE: Now that you've dealt with the unpleasant business of extracting squash vine borers, you'll want to take some precautions to keep them from returning next season. Squash vine borers are introduced when the borer moth lays its eggs on the underside of your plants leaves. After a gestation period, the eggs hatch and the borers crawl down the plant and then nibble their way into your plants. After the grubs have used up the resources of the plant, they leave and bore into the soil where they form little cocoons. The next spring, they emerge as squash vine borer moths. To stop them, cut them off at these two points of gestation. In early spring, inspect the underside of your plant leaves for borer eggs, and crush any that you find. When tilling your soil, keep an eye out for the borer cocoons and destroy them. You can also wrap the base of the squash in foil during the early spring for the four or five weeks that borer eggs are hatching in your area. In a pinch, you can spray your plant once a week with the pesticide Sevin. If you go this route, the plant only needs to be sprayed for about five weeks. After that time, the 'season' for borer egg hatching will have passed. Unfortunately, Sevin can not discriminate between bugs and may also eradicate the bugs which are helpful to your garden, such as your bees, butterflies and other pollinators.
