Squash Bugs
Risk near you, next 48h
See whether your local forecast favours this disease right now.
When it strikes
Treat, then re-check in 5–7 days
Pick off the worst material, apply the organic option below, and look again after five to seven days. If the spread continued, escalate rather than repeating the same treatment.
Carried by insects
An insect moves it plant to plant, so controlling the carrier matters as much as treating the symptom. Check for the vector before assuming the plants infected each other directly.
Safe to compost
No pathogen carries over on this material, so it can go on an ordinary heap with the rest of the garden waste.
When and where to look
Scout the planting while temperatures hold between 21°C and 35°C.
The signs that lead here
Full problem lists for these crops
About
Squash bugs are shield-shaped sap-sucking insects that attack squash, pumpkins and other cucurbits through summer, causing wilting that can be mistaken for bacterial wilt and killing young plants.
Symptoms
Wilting and yellow speckling of leaves that progress to brown and crisp; bronze egg clusters in leaf-vein angles; grey-brown adults and pale green nymphs clustered at the plant base.
Organic Treatment
Crush egg clusters, trap adults under boards overnight, hand-pick, and spray young nymphs with insecticidal soap or neem before they mature.
Chemical Treatment
Pyrethroids targeted at young nymphs; adults are hard to kill, so timing to egg hatch is essential.
Prevention
Use row cover until flowering, clean up cucurbit debris in autumn, rotate crops, and grow on trellises to expose hiding spots.
Crops at risk
Related problems
Squash Bugs risk by location
Each location has a month-by-month profile computed from the weather archive: how many hours a year actually meet this disease’s thresholds.