I went to battle this morning with the squash bugs fornicating, and I do mean fornicating on my beloved Italian zucchini plant. Been battling those horny little things all summer long and I have been losing. They just look right at me and give me the middle finger as they do their disgusting deed right there on my fence line, on the plant itself, on the ground – wherever, whenever, with impunity. Impunity, I say!
They suck the life out of the leaves and kill the plant. It’s a war all summer long.
Well, I “laid down the WW” today, as a sweet friend says with a thick Tennessean accent that I adore. I am not sure what “WW” means but she says it with such conviction that I have adopted it.
Traditional gardeners say to just pick them off and throw them into a bucket of soapy water. Hmmmm. I dunno if I am brave enough.
But I can use technology to grab those suckers and do the same thing.
Bissel makes a little dust-buster type vacuum that’s very simple and poorly rated due to it’s lack of suction. Well, that’s just the perfect amount of suction to suck those little heathens up. It worked!!! The little dust cup is simple so all I had to do was take it off and throw it into a basin of soap water and well, they went to meet their maker right then and there.
Then I used duct tape to peel off the clusters of eggs resultant from their dirty little partays – the eggs are on on the leaves, and they are sticky, so duct tape pulls off most of them in one fell swoop. BLAMMO.
I also pulled up the mulch I put in earlier in the season – apparently they love to nest and hide in there. After I threw the mulch in a bucket, a few came scrambling up and out – making a beeline for the brown fence. RUN FOR YOUR LIVES I could hear them say! Too bad, so sad. I laid the WW down on them too. They really must have been traumatized.
In the end, the victory isn’t really that sweet. They are just doing what they were created to do. I don’t really understand the purpose they serve in God’s green garden, but nubbit, they ain’t gonna get my squash now. I am armed.
