Pickleworm

The pickleworm adult is a night flying moth whose body is brownish yellow with a purple sheen. The wings are an inch across and have yellowish-brown borders. The moth has dark, brushlike hairs at the tip of its abdomen that wave in the air when the moth is resting. Eggs are barely visible and are yellowish-white and are laid singly or in clusters on plants. Pickleworm larvae are 3/4 inch long and are yellowish white with dark spots changing to a green with brown head when mature. Adults overwinter in extreme south and migrate more north in spring.

It attacks cucumber, squash, cantelope, pumpkins and other cucurbits. The symptoms you want to look for include holes in flowers, leaf buds and young fruit. Later on, the worms tunnel into the vines and fruit. small masses of green sawdust-like excrement appear around holes in fruit. Fruit will probably rot.

Several miniature beneficial wasps, braconid and ichneumonid, will parasitize the larvae. Trichogrammawasps parasitize the eggs. Nematodes can be apled to plants where they will take shelter in large blossoms and parasitize larvae. This is not effective on cucurbits with small flowers such as cucumber and melons. spray the nematodes onto squash and pumpkin plants at dusk once or twice per week when weather is humid. Other controls include row covers (remove during flowering) to keep moths from laying eggs and Bt.

These bugs can ruin a whole cucurbit crop in a matter of weeks. Stop them before they do.

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