Key Tips For Growing Pumpkins And Squash. Well cultivated squash will be trouble free as long as you protect young plants with a floating row cover to keep out insect pests. Remove the cover when the plants start to flower to allow for pollination. The two pests most likely to attack are squash vine borers and squash bugs. Squash vine borers, which are most damaging to winter squash, look like one inch long white caterpillars. Mexican Made Easy on this page. With summer coming to a close and autumn creeping up on us, youre bound to see some winter squashes like pumpkins start sprouting up in fields and farmers markets. They tunnel into stems and can go undetected until a vine wilts. Keep an eye out for the adult borer, a wasplike orange and black moth which will lay tiny red and orange eggs at the base of the stem. Rub the eggs with your finger to destroy them, and look for entry holes at the base of the plants, surrounded by yellow, sawdustlike droppings. Cut a slit along afflicted stems and remove and destroy the larvae inside, or inject the stems with Btk Bacillus thuringiensis var. Hill up soil over the stem wounds to encourage the plant to sprout new roots there. Winter Squashes' title='Winter Squashes' />The best ways to store, freeze, dehydrate and can pumpkin, butternut and other winter squashes. Learn how to preserve pumpkins and other squashes. Squash bugs are grayish brown bugs up to inch long nymphs are similar, but do not have wings. Feeding by adults and nymphs causes leaves to wilt and blacken. Hand pick them and drop them in a container of soapy water. Also destroy their red brown egg clusters on the undersides of leaves. To trap adults, lay boards on the soil at night because the squash bugs tend to congregate beneath them and you can destroy the pests the next morning. Planting radishes, nasturtiums, or marigolds among your squash plants may help repel squash bugs. Related 1. Nontoxic Ways To Keep Pests Out.