I want dill pickles, lots of them. Pickled gherkins. Baby cucumbers in cider vinegar with a little dill. We eat them all winter. But there is a wicked little insect that is determined to thwart my attempts to fill the cellar with pickles. You know the bug that burrows into the stem of all kinds of cucurbits. Cucumbers, zuchinni, acorn squash – that whole family. It lays its eggs, the larvae eats into the main stem and then KILLS the plant. What a dumb insect. It has a name but I have forgotton it. We just call it the bad bug. He is grey with a triangular head, is more commonly found out here in the midwest and I hate him.
The good news is Diatomaceous Earth kills him. Though you should begin to dust the plant before the bug comes. Almost all organic pest management schemes are pro active. But it is also a pretty good deterrent. If this dust gets that nasty little insect when he lands as a flying insect it will be vamoosed. Once the larvae is in the stem life is more difficult. 
You know how people say you only need one or two zuchinni plants in your garden and you will still be trying to give them away.. not so here.. at the Farmy and at Greg’s we have trouble with the bad bug. So Greg – just get a sieve and dust your plant frequently.
Make sure it is food grade. I desperately want to make pickles but I think that while I was away the Bad Big got into my cucumbers. I am going to resow, you never know, we may get a long summer.
They say to put fresh newspaper around the base of plant . Net the plants when they are little. Keep the roots of the plant cool. Also be very careful to rotate your plants out of infected soils.
There is still one cuc hanging on. Fingers crossed.
Mama and Tilly hanging out in the barn.
While I was busy elsewhere I forgot to thin the peaches and we have an enormous crop of very tiny peaches.
So as an experiment I have begun a peach liqueur. I got this idea from The Garden Correspondent, Siobhan, who makes cherry liquer every year. I am not sure about my recipe. I figured the more vodka the better. So I am going to have to make a few more batches, just to try out a few different recipes you understand. I will let you know how it goes. If you have a recipe I would love to hear about it. I have a LOT of tiny peaches. The piglets love them too.
Good morning. I hope you all have a lovely day.
your friend, celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
61 responses to “Diatomaceous earth kills the bad squash eating bug”
You can poach just about anything in vodka – a friend of mine even did it with a mars bars! It wasn’t to my taste, but it did work. You might be able to poach the same peaches twice – it works for me with sloe gin, but might depend on the flavour inside the fruit. In sloe gin some of the taste comes from the stone 😉
Ah Good because i left the stones in.. too hard to get them out! I have more peaches so i shall start another lot in a few days, the peaches are ripening very fast in this heat! c
If you are interested, there’s a sloe gin forum with lots of other fruit and vodka recipes here:
http://www.sloe.biz/pip/viewforum.php?f=5&sid=46518ebb31297357245fa72e566cf44c
I just saw a delightful recipe on Raymond Blanc: How to Cook Well episode 2 – peaches poached in white wine. As you’ve got so many here it is:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/peaches_poached_in_white_87156
Let me know if the BBC don’t give international access, I can always send it to you.
I would imagine that the the show will be on YouTube in a day or two – it’s a very good one 😉
Oh HOMEWORK!!! Excellent, i shall have a look in the morning, sometimes Youtube will work in the mornings! Thank you mad.. c
Oh, C, it’s so frustrating to sow and weed and watch and then have some bad bug snatch away your potential harvest. My two tomato plants have dry rot, I suspect from those few days when I was out of town and the soil got too dry. Here’s hoping your growing season is lengthy and you are able to make pickles later.
Sometimes we do get that long summer.. here’s hoping! c
I don’t think we get The Bad Bug here – not so far at least! I find it’s always difficult to think in advance about protecting growing plants. We have the same problem every year with sawfly larvae on the gooseberries and redcurrants. Not this year though, we finally remembered after writing a reminder on the calendar IN CAPITALS!!!
Christine
Can’t you just eat the peaches? Or are they too green? I plan to have peaches with polenta for breakfast today.
We are certainly eating them but they are about the size of a walnut! So It is two bites and done, i eat about twenty a day!! Love them..Peaches and polenta sounds yum.. c
Oh how I would love to have a peach tree!! My cucumbers are being attacked by powdery mildew 😦 So far I have two nice cukes to salvage. Suggestions for what I can do for them?
Ah a mildew. Hate it. Hot and wet? Spray once a week with a whole milk, the protein in it beats down the mildew.. Mix a little water with it. Or dawn . (not really organic but useful) . usually I use half and half.. But whatever you do KEEP doing it ..it won’t eradicate it but it will knock it back and let the plant get healthier.. .. c
I so admire the hard work you put in whilst simultaneously thinking what a good plan it was to have gravel, instead of earth in the tiny walled garden. Even in this environment there are bugs that completely fuck me off. I’d attack the courgettes and cucumbers with a hammer…..serious cutting of the nose to spite the face stuff:)
John knows the feeling, he has taken a knife and cut out the larvae! You have such wonderful markets where you are, you probably don;t need a garden anyway .. c
I’m always worried that the DE will kill the good bugs so I have yet to use it on my plants. We already have so few bees I was pollinating the squash by hand. The peaches may be small but they’re so pretty. Have a great day, Celi!
I too have reservations, however it is not an airborne broadcast spray, i simply dust the stems at the bottom of the plant, the bees seldom go down into the dark under there, I never dust the flowers .. so I am hoping that it does not affect my bees too much, I tried to hand pollinate my inside lemons in the winter.. no joy though..
I love making fruit flavoured vodka, damson is a favourite.
Sorry about your nasty bug. Hereabouts zucchini grow into huge marrows if you don’t pick them every day (and give lots away).
When we had a peach tree it used to give bucketloads of smallish peaches, and I used to bottle them in a brandy syrup for winter puddings – from common crumbles to fancy dinner party desserts. In summer I had brown hands from de-stoning the fruit.
Love,
ViV
Ah .. so i am on the right track!! Excellent.. c
How gorgeous peach heaven! Peach ice cream is just divine and of course peach and basil sauce…recipes can be dispatched post haste if needed. Do you have a dehydrator to dry your peaches?
The bugs the bugs don’t they just drive you mad! I been using an organic spray to stop the fruit fly that loves the ruby grapefruit………their almost ripe; all good so far! E.
OO peach and basil sauce, that sounds divine, I have piles of basil too at the moment! c
Oh and I do have a dehydrator but it runs on electricity loudly and it is like sitting on a prickle listening to it whir away.. I need something more cost effective.. c
Dry it in the sun!! Or if you have an old car/hatchback/van with all of its windows…set the fruit on screens over newspapers in the car in the sun/windows up and dry away. Turn every day until where you like it. Remove fruit and newspapers when you are done. I also use a screen covered in cheese cloth top and bottom, laying on a hot roof, with newspaper to catch any drips.
I gave my big old dehydrator away to one of my kids who runs it on her patio. Works for me…I don’t have to hear it anymore.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
http://deltacountyhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com
A CAR!!! What a splendid idea.. i am not short of those, maybe I can dry them on the seats of the green truck! Splendid.. I shall start some tomorrow.. what a great idea! Thank you Linda.. c
You can use newspapers or cookie sheets. I like to use newspaper on cookie sheets to catch the drips. Although, I have very little in the way of drips.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
I have a recipe for drying apricots without a dehydrator; you could try it if the peaches are small. I’ll send it with other recipes I have for you.
I promised you recipes ages ago sorry about the delay; a major exam last week and a monster assignment due very soon. E
Cor! What a nasty grey triangular bug that is..I hate him too and his family…Just look what happened to your cucumbers!! Down with Grey Bug! Down with Grey Bug!
Not sure what to do with peaches as I am not a cookie person…but vodka with peaches sounds fine and will help alleviate thoughts of Grey Bug
A general rule about anything is “The more vodka, the better.”
Does diatom powder kill bugs on collard greens? I am raising collards for tortoise food, and the leaves are getting a wee lacy. Something is dining on them, and it’s not a tortoise!
It should and probably would be fine for the tortoise to eat as well.. sometimes i spray with garlic or dawn, Let me know how it goes though! If it is japanese beetle then Dawn will kill them… c
Yum have fun tasting!
Darned bugs and their appetites that can swallow a planet. We are having a lot of green fly this year. We are not amused. Morning,c!
We recently made peach jam. I highly suggest it! It’s delicious! Even better is the peach grapefruit marmalade we made!
-About 3-4 cups chopped, cooked peaches. The peaches should be chopped smallish and boiled for about 10 minutes on low heat before they are measured. It should be a thick peachy soup.
-One big, ripe ruby red grapefruit.
-Three or more cups of sugar to taste
While the peaches boil down, separate the grapefruit rind and the pulp. Chop up both and throw the rind in a food processor until it is in very tiny bits.
When the peaches are done add all the grapefruit (rind and pulp) and cook for another 5 minutes. Add the sugar to taste (at least 3 cups but more is fine) and cook for 5 minutes more, the liquid should start becoming clear and the mixture should be a little gooey.
Pack into hot jars and water bath can for 10 minutes.
Let cool and it will set up nearly solid. There is natural pectin in the rinds of grapefruit, natural citric acid in the grapefruit, so all you need is sugar and a low boil to get a good set.
This would also make an amazing base for a teriyaki sauce. (Grapefruit peach teriyaki chicken anyone? :D)
Oh that sounds quite divine, and thank you so much for the recipe! c
It’s quite good and you’re quite welcome! It was an experiment we tried because we’d made 12 jars of peach already, didn’t have enough for another full batch, and we had a grapefruit sitting around. It made three hefty pint jars of jam with a smidge left over, just enough for biscuits that night.
For reference, the peach jam itself was 6 cups boiled peaches, 4.5 cups of sugar and a package of pectin from the store. It came out a little thin, though, even after re-processing with the no sugar needed pectin. I think our peaches were too ripe and needed to be boiled down more.