Like a surgeon...

So this is a little bit of a historical post. This is about what happened last week, and I'll bring you up to date on current status in the next couple of days.

Last week, Sarah saw some holes in the pumpkins that she thought looked like they might be from squash vine borers. I was a little bit skeptical at first, probably just wishful thinking, but then we got a positive ID from Dr. Taylor. There were borers in the vines, and this was no time for trepidation, this was a time for action.

So, I got together some tools - razor blades, forceps, and composted manure, and I headed out to the pumpkin patch to do some surgery. I saw a couple of things. At first glance, I saw this:















You'll notice that the vine on the right is severely wilted, although the one on the left looks as perky as the girl who plans the office secret santa. Now, the vines do temporarily wilt sometimes on hot days (it's a water conservation response) but it's usually the whole vine or nothing - this doesn't look good for vine #1.

Looking closer unveiled the smoking gun:















That hole right there (with the brown, necrotic ring around it) is the squash vine borer's calling card - that's where it entered the vine to begin it's reign of terror. I simply could not let this stand.

So, with help from Jonathan, from Dr. Jan Jaworski's lab, I cut open the vine:















And we pulled those little scoundrels out:



Just look at him - he thought he could just sit there inside my vine, eating away, destroying our hopes and dreams of giant pumpkins. Well, he thought wrong. I tossed him and every one of his friends that Jonathan and I could find out into the tall grass to dessicate their way to a slow, painful death. To make sure the injured vines wouldn't suffer a similar fate, we covered the cut portions in a thick layer of composted manure to keep in moisture and keep out potential secondary infections:



The next night, I came through and sprayed a heavy coat of Sevin, a potent commercial insecticide, to ensure that no more pests tried to take up residence inside my vines. I made sure to spray after the flower buds had closed so that beneficial insects like bees would be unaffected. Bees are smart, they only touch the inside of the buds when they come to do their pollinating, so as long as you don't get pesticide inside the buds, you won't hurt them.

After that, there were a lot of risks, though: did I get them all? Would the insecticide have side effects for the plant? Would the injury to the vines from the surgery cause other problems? Even if everything went well, what effect would this episode have on the ultimate size of the pumpkin? Only time will tell...

XOXO