The Yellow Striped Cucumber Beetle

If you've had this varmint in your garden, youll "mmhmm" when I mention it. The *yellow striped cucumber beetle* whom I might add is quite partial to zucchini, squash and cantaloupe plants as well. The bug does this: he chews through the foliage of your vines and will eventually destroy the entire plant. My experience with these was about two weeks ago now. I was checking out my garden and I saw hoardes of these on my vine plants (and noticeable foliage damage). I had seen the bug before, and my first instinct was to kill the bugs! So I crawled along, squishing every bug that I could get my hands on. I was probably at it for 15 minutes or so. Now, I was able to squish them because they were all busy mating (and conspiring to destroy my garden), and cannot fly when theyre doing that. The next night I went bug squishing again, and several flew off on me. I still got quite a few and believe it or not, that looked after the problem. In between my evenings of squishing bugs, I did a bit of research, to find solutions like: heavy pesticide use, sticky traps, trap crops on the border of your garden etc. I was pleased to find an alternative solution to that though, just with a little extra time and labour. So for cucumber beetles, nip them in the bud and hopefully that will put an end to them.

***I did hear that a rinsing your plants with sunlight dishsoap and water will look after bugs. I don't know if it works though..

 (Photo credit Google Images)