I have a thought. Please let me know if you’ve ever tried this!
I have a really annoyingly high squash bug population in my yard. I had zero squash fruits this year because of those critters. I’m thinking about trying a polyculture of dill and squashes next year.
I’m thinking that:
• Dill is aromatic. That should disguise the scent of the squashes from the squash bugs a little.
• Dill is tall and skinny. Neither should have a problem with getting shaded out, because those tall, skinny stalks can poke right in between the giant squash leaves, and they’ll both get full sun.
• Dill attracts predator insects, especially the squash bug egg parasitic wasp (Gryon pennsylvanicum), which specializes in eating squash bug eggs, and the feather-legged fly (Trichopoda pennipes), which loves to eat squash bug adults and young larvae.
I’m thinking I might consider adding three others to the polyculture, too:
• Garlic (another aromatic to confuse the squash bugs).
• Nasturtiums (a trap crop that squash bugs might colonize first).
• Daikon radishes (apparently radish flowers attract damsel flies, which also eat squash bugs).
I love intercropping dill and cilantro with just about anything that takes longer to grow than it does (some faves are brassicas, squash, peas, beans tomatoes ugh everything, letting them flower will surely attract pollinators and of course make seed that will do better for you ( i find cilantro and dill do crazy better grown in the same place the seed was saved. Like same garden)
Garlic would be good but the seasons kind of off, maybe perfect but i feel like when garlic is trying to dry out is when squash would be starting to shade it (but thats more of a problem in my climate than your as i suppose)
I would just say with nasturtium use a heavy hand and be okay with cutting it back whenever it’s impedeing the squash. I would use calendula same as nasturtium. Radish would also be very happy especially cause you can sow and grow it while squash is getting started and it will have plenty of time to get big and flower above them!
I actually grew a squash patch full of calendula, nasturtium, some radish, some lettuce, and cabbages this year ‘twas lovely… I’ll send a pic from the phone later.
Apparently anise and cumin are good options for attracting the squash bug predators, too. (According to Google AI, so if you know a much better source contradicting that, please let me know!) It says dill is the best, but cumin is good at it too, and anise is okay. All three are interesting and taste good, so I’m rather inclined to try all three.
Love that Dill does that! I am very lucky to bot have to deal with squash bugs, to the point that when you said squash bugs i thought you just meant any bugs that eat squash, im hopeful for the dill! And curious to see how the others grow! Makes me wonder about fennel?!?!
We’ve had some luck planting carrots the spring before and letting them stay and flower the following spring when we plant the squash plants. Their flowers do a good job of attracting those predator wasps, etc. and they’re not allelopathic. Lovage is something that lives through the winter, doesn’t spread and also produces those kinds of flowers. It is a bit allelopathic like the fennel, but having some scattered around as perennials is really helpful. We have fennel in the same way. It hasn’t spread and is perennial, so we have just a few token plants for the pollinators. We’re at 5,000 feet in ABQ, NM. Additionally, the best thing so far has been to plant the squash as early as possible and throw row cover over it until it starts to flower. Then we remove the row cover and give the squash one round of 100% organic neem oil on the underside of the leaves and about 2 times of looking for and destroying adults and egg rafts. This has worked the last two years. It seems as though the squash is old enough, strong enough, ??? whatever else that the squash bugs move on to something easier elsewhere. It’s way better than spending days on end for the whole summer neeming and squashing squash bugs and still ending up with no squash – that was before we started using the row cover. I know row cover is an intervention, but so far it’s the “least” intervention that has actually helped a lot.
