This is just what I needed to learn. The cucumber beetles are going nuts on my plants and I can only catch so many of them because they fly away and hide. I read somewhere that some larger growing establishments use vacuum cleaners to suck up the cucumber beetles!
Butternut and tromboncino are resistant to vine borders. The butternut is common but the tromboncino less so. It can be used as a summer or winter squash if left on the vine longer. As a summer squash it is a little like zucchini and yellow squash at the same time. These guys are VERY prolific. Two plants will completely cover an 8' section of cattle panel and keep going.
This was super well-timed. I literally got into a discussion about tromboncino with another gardener just this weekend and was debating whether to try it. Sold!
Your plants look like there in the middle of a government mandated lockdown. Have you considered growing them in polycultures? It might help protect them, ie. pest confusion and predator habitat. I am still experimenting with this myself but like what I see so far.
Yup, I normally do plant in polyculture mixes; this is a weird year because I got a very late start (just did a video on that), on top of a bunch of my transplants being wiped out by fungus gnats. For whatever reason, they didn’t go after the squash, so the “straggling survivors” that I was able to plant skew super heavy to the cucurbit family. In a normal year these would be interplanted with tomatoes, beans, and beets + holy basil to help with pollination and pest confusion, and probably some sweet alyssum as a trap crop. This year, it’s just making do with what I’ve got. I’ll say that even with polyculture, you should manage expectations because they aren’t a cure-all; cabbage moths as an example find my kale no matter what else is planted around them. If you’ve got a huge garden and can afford some losses then they may be enough, but if you really need to maximize the harvest I’d recommend these measures even with a polyculture planting. 👍
@@WellGroundedGardens I appreciate the response. I’m not familiar with sweet alyssum so I’ll give that a look. You’re way ahead of me on summer crops; I’m still experimenting with deer strategies, and let’s just say there’s been some failures this year. 🦌
@@WellGroundedGardens nice. I find that strategy works well, and I’ve decided to do something similar, basically having a 4 ft tall fence with obstructions (trellises, trees, another fence) close behind. This year I enclosed a 4x20 bed with pieces of 4’ tall welded wire attached to t-posts using small carabiner clips and wire. It’s a tight enough area that they don’t jump in, and it’s easy enough to unclip one side of a piece of welded wire and swing it out for casual access, or detach completely for more intensive access. It’s kept them out even with all that tempting lettuce and okra!
