I would like to collect all my vines in a pile on the patch and burn them. I had squash bugs quite bad this year and am still working on killing them even though I have harvested most of my pumpkins. Is this an OK plan or should I be collecting and taking them to the county yard waist site. I just figure this will end up making the bugs someone else problem next year. I'd rather burn.

I also planted pumpkin in a very large but shallow pit (30'X30') filled with leaves. These pumpkins were also infested. Am I wrong to assume that the squash bugs have laid eggs in the composting leaves and I have now constructed a large breeding bed for the buggers. Shall I try to burn leaves in the pit. This would be quite disconcerting as our plan was to continue to dump our leaves in this pit every year and compost them until the pit was filled. There are all sorts of worms and other beneficial creatures in there.

Thanks for any input or ideas, Sid