Squash Bugs and Morning Glories?

VickiP
VickiP Posts: 586 ✭✭✭✭

Has anyone had this experience? I found this comment on a seed company site: "morning glory and sweet potato roots were started around the winter squash perimeter; squash bugs hate the ipomoea family." We have a terrible time with squash bugs. We have started early crops and let the bugs have them, then pull and burn and start fresh, that seems to help, but still they will eventually make inroads. This year for some reason the second sowing didn't even sprout.

Comments

  • MaryRowe
    MaryRowe Posts: 736 ✭✭✭✭

    This is the first time I've read about morning glory repelling squash bugs, but I'd be skeptical. I have a terrible problem with squash bugs too--they are just a plague. I didn't even try growing squash this year because they wiped me out the last two years. Morning glories took over one of the trellises I usually grow squash on, and I just let them go because I use the vines for baskets. I cut the morning glory vines to make a couple of baskets in Sept. and found a few squash bugs still hanging around the vines. Don't know what they were eating this year, I didn't think I had anything to attract them. They did no damage to the morning glories, but didn't seem much bothered by them either. Maybe different kinds of squash bugs, or different kinds of morning glory?

  • Angel
    Angel Posts: 61 ✭✭✭

    I have morning glories, squash bugs, and squash. I have a lot of problems with squash bugs, and this is the first time I've heard of morning glories repelling them. I have not seen that in my yard.

  • Acequiamadre
    Acequiamadre Posts: 269 ✭✭✭

    A neem oil mix seems to help. I have not noticed morning glories repelling them.

  • VickiP
    VickiP Posts: 586 ✭✭✭✭

    Well I had never heard of it either, but thought I would throw it out there and see if anyone else had any experiences with them. Doesn't look promising. Squash bugs are the bane of my garden, ugh.

  • MaryRowe
    MaryRowe Posts: 736 ✭✭✭✭

    Squash bugs have to be about the worst bug pest there is. They seem to be almost indestructible. Haven't tried neem oil yet, but now I will. @Acequiamadre how do you use it? And I got to thinking, after I posted about morning glories, that sweet potatoes probably don't help either--two years back I had zucchini in one raised bed, sweet potatoes in the bed next to it, a 3-foot path between them. The sweet potatoes did just fine, but the squash bugs wiped out the zucchini as usual. Has anyone had any luck with a companion plant to discourage squash bugs?