@thezenhenandthehoneybee: Caterpillars can be an absolute menace to food crops. Fortunately, there is organic BT Thuricide (Bacillus thuringiensis) a naturally occurring bacterium that’s harmless to everything other than caterpillars. It has saved so many of my plants and allowed me to grow more food. Make sure to spray it all over your plant just before dark. By morning your caterpillars will gone. If you have a lot of plants to spray I recommend a pump sprayer over the small manual squeeze types. It’ll save your hands from fatigue. I get the concentrate as each bottle lasts seemingly forever. The good and bad news is that it has a very short half life in the sun and degrades quickly. This means that it will need to be reapplied weekly if you are having lots of caterpillar pest problems. The good news is that it doesn’t stick around or move to other plants to harm caterpillars from beneficial species. Eg. Don’t spray it on your milkweed and it won’t harm monarchs. Sprayed frequently at the base of squashes and pumpkins it’s a game changer for squash vine borers. Another good solution for squash vine borers is to grow varieties without hollow stems that are naturally resistant to the borers. Cucurbita moschata varieties have solid stems unlike most others which have hollow stems which make them very resistant to squash vine borers Resistant varieties are spaghetti squash, Tromboncino aka zucchetta aka rampicante, Seminole Pumpkins, Tatume squash and Calabaza squash.

TheZenHenandTheHoneyBee

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Tuesday 12 May 2026 23:46:36 GMT