# Solid stem squash?



## GBov (May 4, 2008)

Between the four or five kinds of borers and shield bugs and squash bugs and mildew, my garden kinda bit the dust this year. 

But I saw a reference to solid stem squash and thought, hmmmmm, THAT might work!

So does anyone know any other than butternut? I HATE butternut squash lol.

And any cucumber, summer squash, winter squash and pumpkins that might be resistant to the above mentioned pests?


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## NickieL (Jun 15, 2007)

I hear ya!!!

I have terrible troubles with the borers...(everything else I don't have an issue with).

I have found that they leave birdhouse gourds alone. And they left my Poona Keera cucumbers alone...didn't even get the mildew with them, either.

I haven't found any pumpkins yet that they won't go for but the sugar pies give me SOME crop even when infested. also I found that growing a hybrid summer squash seems to give me more of a quick crop then the old fashined Open pollinated zucchni does.


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## mnn2501 (Apr 2, 2008)

GBov said:


> might work!
> 
> So does anyone know any other than butternut? I HATE butternut squash lol.


How about Buttercup?


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## GBov (May 4, 2008)

mnn2501 said:


> How about Buttercup?


Havnt had buttercup. Is it nice? And solid stemmed?


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## maters (May 25, 2011)

I bought from (Baker Creek Seeds) Zucchini Rampancante (sp?) and Tatumes (a N. America native). They made it through the summer. It was miserably hot, so they, nor anything else, produced well this summer. The Tatumes did better than the ZRs in the summer. The ZRs are doing a lot better now. The Tatumes will turn into pumpkins if you let them. You will probably miss some and will get some pumpkins as once they get a little larger than a baseball, you just need to let them go to pumpkins. ZRs are also supposedly able to become a winter squash. I haven't harvested my missed ones, yet. 

The ZRs have an amazing crunchy texture and seem impossible to overcook. Great flavor, too. Tatumes, especially if you catch them small are very sweet and delicious. The pumpkin sized ones I've only cooked in a curry, but seem typically pumpkin-y.

I obsessively picked borer and squash bug eggs off my plants this summer. I had 2 regular zukes and 1 straightneck yellow squash make it. I just pulled my zukes today and my yellow squash about a month ago. It was a hassle and after not picking eggs off my two new varieties, I don't know how much effort I will put in "traditional" varieties. 

From another reader on this forum, I learned that diluted molasses (1-2 tbls/qt water) will ward of the vine borers. It also works as a soil booster because of the nutrients in the molasses. Next year, I will try this from the start. I just couldn't get on top of it this year.

I really like these varieties and whole heartedly recommend them. They do take up a lot of space. They root at nearly every leaf "junction," so they don't die just because they get gnawed off in one spot. Next year, I will plant them on the edge of the beds near fences so that they can sprawl to their hearts contents. I live in Central AR, btw. 

Also, out of curiosity I bit into a young birdhouse gourd this year. It was about 4-5 inches in length. It was sweet and crunchy. Has anybody cooked with these? Out of frustration at their domineering nature, I severed their stem at the base, but it had rooted in so many other places that it is still going strong (though no longer in the way). Sounds like something worth growing if it is in fact safe to eat for more than one bite.


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## amwitched (Feb 14, 2004)

I have found that the pattypan squash survives very well. Also, try starting the plants in pots and transplanting a month or so after planting from seed. That gives the plant stems some time to "harden".


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## bee (May 12, 2002)

What you want are Mochata squashes. These all should have soild stems. Pepo are most of the pumpkins and summer squash, while Mixta and Maxima are more hollow stemed winter squashes..mostly.

Neck squash, butternuts, long island cheese,and others are in the moshata class.


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## fishhead (Jul 19, 2006)

What about making your garden toad friendly and bird friendly with toad shelters and bird baths and houses?


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## GBov (May 4, 2008)

fishhead said:


> What about making your garden toad friendly and bird friendly with toad shelters and bird baths and houses?


We have many toads and lots and LOTS of lizards and snakes (one coral snake that is going to MOVE as soon as we see it again!) and birds and the stealth chickens are let loose in the garden every now and then, oh yeh, and frogs too.

So LOTS of predators, including the preying mantises we let loose this spring.

Still lost most of the garden to pests :grit:

Got this from the web........

Cucurbita moschata (Hindi: &#2325;&#2342;&#2342;&#2370 is a species originating in either Central America or northern South America.[1] It includes varieties of squash and pumpkin. C. moschata varieties are generally more tolerant of hot, humid weather than C. maxima or C. pepo. They also generally display a greater resistance to disease and insects, especially to the squash vine borer. Varieties include:

Butternut squash
Dickinson field pumpkin - used for commercially canned pumpkin
Kentucky field pumpkin
Long Island cheese pumpkin - exterior resembles a wheel of cheese in shape, color, and texture
Calabaza pumpkin - a commonly grown squash in Cuba and Puerto Rico
Seminole pumpkin - a squash cultivated by the Seminole Indians of Florida
Neck pumpkin - the ancestor of butternut squash and ideal for pumpkin pie. Most popular in the Mid-Atlantic states of the United States, particularly in areas with an Amish influence.[2]
Long of Naples squash
.........................

So will be trying all the above this year!


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## NickieL (Jun 15, 2007)

my garden is as critter friendly as it can be. I have lots of toads, snakes and birds. I NEVER poision anything or use chemicals at all...all I do is hand pick and compost. I have no aphid, squash bug, stink bug issues because everything is just about in ballence. BUT I STILL GET VINE BORERS.

GBOV, I will see if I can find a source for some of those you've listed.


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## Vickie44 (Jul 27, 2010)

I find Butternut , acorn and pattypan to do the best I can expect when overrun by stink bugs and borers ( this year was awful )


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## GBov (May 4, 2008)

Spent most of last evening searching for seed sources to every solid stem squash/pumpkin I could find.

I also found a nice seed source for eatable gourds completely by accident but shall have some of these for sure! http://www.seedsofindia.com/ed_gourds.htm

One thing I have noticed, with 50ft vines, my yard is REALLY not big enough! Was imagining it festooned with twelve different kinds of gourds, squashes and pumpkins and in my head it looked like something from Dr Who :hysterical:


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## woodsy_gardener (May 27, 2007)

GBov said:


> We have many toads and lots and LOTS of lizards and snakes (one coral snake that is going to MOVE as soon as we see it again!) and birds and the stealth chickens are let loose in the garden every now and then, oh yeh, and frogs too.


Are you sure it's a coral snake?
Look at the pattern of red, yellow, and black stripes and remember:
Red on Black--Friend of Jack.
Red on yellow--Kill the Fellow.


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## NickieL (Jun 15, 2007)

GBov said:


> Spent most of last evening searching for seed sources to every solid stem squash/pumpkin I could find.
> 
> I also found a nice seed source for eatable gourds completely by accident but shall have some of these for sure! http://www.seedsofindia.com/ed_gourds.htm
> 
> One thing I have noticed, with 50ft vines, my yard is REALLY not big enough! Was imagining it festooned with twelve different kinds of gourds, squashes and pumpkins and in my head it looked like something from Dr Who :hysterical:


take it from me....even ONE comost fed birdhouse gourd will swallow your whole yard, your home, and any children walking past that are not fast enough...:run:


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Squash vine borer moths operate at night when most birds are asleep. Also only need one to pretty much take care of a half acre by laying a single egg on each vine. 

As previously mentioned, grow only those which are C. moschata. There's roughly 80-100 varieties available to over all needs from pumpkins, winter squash, and zucchini. You just have to check the variety information to make certain which you have.

Regarding patty pan, C. pepo, mine held out until they started loading up on fruit and then began going downhill but slow. Buttercup, C. maxima, never got a chance to go much beyond blooming and was gone. Butternut, C. moschata, would still be green and growing if it weren't for frost stopping them. 

Martin


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## GBov (May 4, 2008)

woodsy_gardener said:


> Are you sure it's a coral snake?
> Look at the pattern of red, yellow, and black stripes and remember:
> Red on Black--Friend of Jack.
> Red on yellow--Kill the Fellow.


It was in the short grass of my path in my veg. garden and my hubby and I both stood looking at it saying out loud...........

"Red touch yellow, OK, there's the yellow, there's the red ooooooooooh BUGGER!" And then it took its little black head out of its coils and looked at us.

So yes, its a coral snake :help:

Managed to find it again later that same day - after loosing it that morning - and I was standing on it while hubby ran to get the tongs but it got bored and squiggled out from under me and through the fence before he got back to us.

They are far faster and MUCH more agile than one would think! 

And patty pan squash bit the dust fast here. I had pretty good luck with lemon squash, they managed to produce about 8 fruits each before the borers killed them :stars:


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## bee (May 12, 2002)

ok..two things you can do about borers..cover your plants at night when the moths are active and the pollenators are not. Remay or other lightweight agricultural cloth for frost protection will work..it takes time and care but it will help.

The other is surgery or shots....when you see the brown frass where the borer poop is coming out of the stem, cut the stem longwise and remove the borer. Bury your surgery site and several leaf nodes past it. Where you bury the nodes roots will grow and help feed your damaged plant. The sooner you get the borer out the better the results. Alternately, get benneficial nematodes OR liquid pyrethrum/rotonone and inject them into the hollow stem in several places AHEAD of the borer hole to kill the grub without surgery. Still bury the damaged section and several leaf nodes past toward the growing end of the vine; you can't have too many feeder roots!
And last, when pulling the dieing/dead vines take the time to split the stems and crush any grubs found. Know that the grubs that make it thru their feeding cycle will exit the vine and pupate in the soil to emerge as moths next year ready to re-new the cycle....and your frustration. Turning the soil in your squash patch and allowing poultry access to find the pupae is also good management...more than once if you can.

Do I do all these things? No. I have not invested the time in more than cleanup splitting the vines and ocassional surgery. The reasons are that locally grown squash during season is plentiful and cheap, while my time is at a premium. SIGH..next year my focus is on prevention, takes less time and has better results. Luck to you all!!


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## Vickie44 (Jul 27, 2010)

Bee What do you do for prevention ?~ Vickie


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

bee said:


> Do I do all these things? No. I have not invested the time in more than cleanup splitting the vines and ocassional surgery. The reasons are that locally grown squash during season is plentiful and cheap, while my time is at a premium. SIGH..next year my focus is on prevention, takes less time and has better results. Luck to you all!!


We share the same reason for not growing a lot of squash. There's a market grower who raises acres of just about every type there is and one used to be able to fill a 50-pound onion sack for $5. Now I think that he's up to around $8 and still a lot cheaper than growing them. I only grew a lot them this year just because I had the room to do so. The main thing that I learned is that gardening in an area almost completely surrounded by corn didn't keep any bugs away. Instead, it concentrated them into the only garden within several miles.

Martin


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## xbigp (Apr 9, 2011)

this year in my garden i grew papaya pear summer squash, _Cucurbita pepo_

it showed outstanding resistance to squash vine borer, squash bugs, and powdery mildew when compared side by side with various crooknecks and pattypan. the patypan and crooknecks have been dead a month from vine borer, and my papaya pears just now died, due to frost. 

just my experience, it may be different next year


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

There's another way to defeat the borers. That's to mound about 6" of soil over a stem joint every 4 or 5 feet. Vines will set roots down from there and bypass the original root system. Sometimes the plants will even do it themselves. Not certain if one type or another is more apt to do it but I have seen it happen.

Martin


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## geo in mi (Nov 14, 2008)

Here's a good article on organic controls that may help. Many of the suggestions are also in the article. I will also post this on the"fireside" sticky above so others can read it more carefully during the winter months.

http://www.michiganorganic.msu.edu/uploads/files/31/Squash bug and Squash Vine Borer Control.pdf

geo


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## bee (May 12, 2002)

prevention??? Vickie44 ,,All you really can do to prevent the borer problem is find a way to keep the moths off your squash plants. If they can get to the plants they will lay eggs on them..and not just the stems. This year I had a borer in a fruit!

First try the remay cloth and put it on before dusk and remove after the dew drys. This should stop the moths but let pollenators get to your squash.

I have heard of foil wrapped stems, dusts of DE and chemicals. Dusts of wood ash and sacrificial squash plants to attract and host borers while allowing later planted squash to thrive borer free. If you contact your extension sevice they should be able to tell you peak egg laying time so you can plant squash after this. If the demand was there I feel there would be sex attractant traps to lure and kill the males so the females either would not lay or would lay non-viable eggs. I don't know of any borer specific predators.

Martin, your corn surrounded garden..did you have a lot of cucumber beetles?? Did I read where the grubs for the cucumber beetles feed on corn roots?


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

bee said:


> Martin, your corn surrounded garden..did you have a lot of cucumber beetles?? Did I read where the grubs for the cucumber beetles feed on corn roots?


Don't know where you may have read that but believe it! Between my garden and a cornfield was a strip of sod just wide enough for me turn my pickup around. Didn't grow any cucumbers because the neighboring farmer grows them for Harris Moran Seed Company. I had a choice of growing only a variety which would not cross with those or help myself whenever I needed some. Needless to say, it was easier to select from his quarter-acre than grow my own! At no time then did I ever see a cucumber beetle there or in my garden. But they sure showed up in my garden about a month ago to try to eat up every watermelon! The only place where they could have come from was the corn. 

Martin


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## GBov (May 4, 2008)

Foil wrapped stems failed to save my lemon summer squash and dustings of seven dust failed as well.

And my sugar pie pumpkin vines got borers in the fruit, where the leaves met the stems, in the leaf stems, in the vines and at the tips. What leaves were missed by borers got leaf rollers instead. They would bite through the leaf veins, fold them over and stitch them together with silk and then eat the rest of the leaf...............

:hair

All of the prevention methods take so much TIME!!! I dont have TIME to cover and uncover every day or to inspect my vines every day and when I planted extra sunflowers to divert another pest problem, all I got were more pests. And I planted squash and cucs from Feb. onward. NOTHING survived after June. I even planted some cucs a month ago. The borers were really appreciative lol.

So finding things that borers DONT eat is about my only option.


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## NickieL (Jun 15, 2007)

This year I planted my summer squash about a month later then norm....I still got some borers but the numbers were greatly reduced and i got a lot of squash. I didn't see a SINGLE squash bug or cucumber beatle at all this year. Last year either. The first year there were hundereds. I never sprayed or did anything to them, I figure things are in a lot better ballence eco wise now.


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## ajaxlucy (Jul 18, 2004)

Zucchetta Rampicante is what I grow, too, instead of regular zucchini. The vines sprawl over impressive distances, rooting where they touch the soil, and manage to outgrow any damage the squash borers try to do. 
The young squash are light green and firmer, less watery than zucchini. The taste is something between zucchini and pumpkin, which can change a recipe if you substitute. 
Older squash are orange inside and can get really big. When I came back from vacation, I found one that must be at least 15 lbs, probably closer to 20. My co-gardener made squash soup and said it was delicious.

Here's a picture:
http://viettes.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/zucchetta-rampicante-–-the-monster-squash/

Edited to add: they're still producing, too. Just picked 2 tender young 1 foot long squash.


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Zucchetta Rampicante is also a C. moschata. One can find any type of squash represented in that family.

Martin


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## GBov (May 4, 2008)

Paquebot said:


> Zucchetta Rampicante is also a C. moschata. One can find any type of squash represented in that family.
> 
> Martin


A yellow crookneck perhaps?


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

GBov said:


> A yellow crookneck perhaps?


Yellow Crookneck is a C. pepo variety. Some of the summer squash in C. moschata to look for are Tromboncino and Zucchetta.

Martin


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