What's eating my squash plants??

10 years ago

Something is biting the leaves off my squash plants! They were all doing great, then one day one of my plants had both leaves missing. The next day, two more plants each had a leaf missing, with the leaf laying right there, no holes or anything, and one plant is gone. No stub of a stem, no footprints or dig marks, it's just gone! Today I went out and every single plant is missing one leaf. What is doing this? What can I do??

Featured Answer

Okiedawn OK Zone 7

3 years ago

I agree with George. Perhaps your plants just aren't ready to support fruit yet. There's a couple of other possibilities though. Check your blossoms first, and make sure you have both male and female blossoms. Often you get only males for a while, maybe 1-3 weeks, before the female blossoms even show up. Since the males can't do anything with no females to pollinate, they shrivel up and fall off the plant after a while. The appearance of male blossoms first is by design so that when the female blossoms show up, there will be plenty of males around to achieve pollination, ensuring the survival of the species. If you have both male and female flowers and both the male and female flowers are aborting, then it is likely the cool, rainy weather is making the pollinators be less active and there's no bees or other pollinators transferring the pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers. If no pollination is achieved, the blossoms drop off the plant. Sometimes a bloom gets pollinated incompletely and the fruit will try to develop for a couple of days but cannot achieve proper growth due to incomplete pollination, and then the flower and small but someone enlarged fruit fall off the plant. If your plants have both male and female blossoms (the males look like normal flowers arising from a stem but the females will have what looks like a small fruit at the lower end of the flower), you can hand-pollinate by transferring pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers. If you need to know how to do this, let us know.

Dawn

Comments (8)

Okiedawn OK Zone 7
10 years ago
If you are sure they're being bitten off, it likely is birds. At our house, the mockingbirds sometimes bite leaves off plants and leave them lying on the ground. Birds can snip leaves off very cleanly without leaving ragged edges.

If you have had excessive moisture and your soil is super-saturated, there is a chance the plants are waterlogged and are dropping their own leaves, which would explain why you don't see bite marks. If the plants are waterlogged enough to drop leaves, usually the leaves turn yellow or yellowish-green first, which is a sign of the stress from excessively wet ground/roots.

If you are talking about true squash leaves, then the above is the most likely scenario. If you are talking about the cotyledons (the first two leaves that open up when the seeds sprout, also called 'seed leaves'), they often just drop off the plant once true leaves have formed and the cotyledons are no longer needed.
tawnybee
Original Author
10 years ago
I'm certain they are being bitten, unfortunately :(
They were all green, healthy and thriving. Hopefully I can get some bird netting up before they get destroyed :/
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slowpoke_gardener
10 years ago
DW,s little Yorkie loves squash plant leaves, as well as other leaves. Maybe you have a dog like that in your neighborhood.

Larry
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
10 years ago
Larry, You'd think that little Yorkie would eat a more tender leaf. Squash leaves can be pretty tough.

Before we raised the height of the garden fence, during a drought year the deer would jump the shorter fence and eat entire pumpkin and squash plants down to the ground, although they usually ate everything with more tender foliage, like peppers, tomatoes, beans and Swiss chard first, and then would eat squash and pumpkin plants the next night when there was nothing better left.

There is a reason we have a great fence around all the big garden spaces---it is because without them, the deer ate everything we planted. I've never had anything smaller than a deer, except birds, eat squash leaves, but our dogs are fenced out of the garden. Even the rabbits are fenced out, and that takes a lot of effort because they are really good at finding places in fences where they can squeeze underneath the fence or through it.

Tawnybee, If it is just about anything other than birds, spraying the plants with a hot pepper spray (you can make your own, just google to get a recipe) will stop them from eating, but if it is birds---the hot pepper spray won't deter them.

If you are in a dry area and water is scarce, putitng out a birdbath or shallow pan of water for the birds might help. I have trouble with birds seeking water in hot, dry weather so keep several shallow pans of water out for them and that makes a big difference in how much they bother the plants.

It might be squirrels, if you have them around you, and often they are seeking water too.

Dawn
Macmex
10 years ago
Ground hogs can do this too. Hope that's not it. They are a nightmare.

George
D H
3 years ago
Curious if you are referring to the bloom where the squash grows... my blooms where the squash are starting to grow are coming off and so no squash! Any advice??
Macmex
3 years ago
No. They were talking about leaves.

What you're talking about is pretty common with squash when they're just starting to bloom. I guess they're just not ready to support the fruit, so they abort. Even when a squash plant is really rolling, growing and producing, they'll abort a certain percentage of their fruit.

You probably don't have to worry about it. They almost always straighten out after a bit.