Melissa I have had decent success some years using an concentrated garlic spray. Some years it seems to really work and others not so well. Why I'm not sure. Other than that I haven't tried any organic method that has seemed to have any effect. When mixing the spray for use to prevent/control bugs I mix it on the strong side. Jay

Jay: What is your recipe for the garlic spray you use? Is it posted somewhere I can go and grab it? I've used a few different recipes, and my bad bugs love it...they ask for bread and sangria
I need a new one

Melissa, I cannot speak for Jay and am sure he'll come back and answer your question himself, but the Garlic spray I use (and I think he has used this same one in the past) is called Garlic Barrier. I usually find it at either a nursery that carries a full-line of organic gardening supplies (in my case, I have to go to the D-FW metro area to find a nursery like that) or sometimes at a feed and seed store like Tractor Supply Company. Sometimes I find it at some TSCs in spring, but not in other years, so either they carry it only sporadically or it sells out regularly.

luvabasil, I am not a real huge fan of internet recipes and here is why: (1) they can give highly variable results and can be a waste of time and effort as they often are not strong enough OR (2) they are too strong and the soap or oil in them burns tender plant foliage in our heat and intense sunlight. With a commercial product, you get consistent results as long as you follow the dilution rates precisely and spray as directed, taking care not to over-spray. If these commercial products should not be used after high temperatures reach a certain label because foliage burn can result, it usually so states on the label.

Sometimes when using a water-based recipe, I'll add either some commercial sticker-spray to make the recipe adhere to the leaves better, or maybe a little superfine summerweight horticultural oil, but it depends on how hot the temperatures are and also on what type of plant I'm spraying. Some plants have much more delicate foliage than others.

Someone as experienced as Jay can go on the strong side by using slightly more product than the label recommends when mixing it up, but I wouldn't do that the very first time I tried a new product. There are times when your gut instinct tells you that more is better, but if you're using a product you've never used before, it can be easy to use too much and burn plant foliage.

If you are using a garlic spray with a water base, that may be the issue. I think they work better when oil or soap based, but precision mixing is needed to avoid burning tender foliage.

Melissia, There are not many organic methods of controlling squash bugs and the only ones that I have found really work involve hand picking and crushing or drowning them, or vacuuming them off the leaves with a shop vac or cordless hand vac with strong suction. If you use a wet-dry shop vac, put a couple of inches of water in the bottom of the cannister before you turn it on. That way the squash bugs fall into the soapy water, the soap coats their bodies and they can't get out. Without the soapy water, when you open the cannister they may be crawling up the sides of it to escape.

I like to lay a 2' x 4' piece of lumber or some other wood scrap on the ground near the squash plants. The bugs congregate under it at night and, in the morning, I pick up the board and step on and smash as many of them as I can before they run away. I also get a fair number of army worms and climbing cutworms this way. I'd rather stomp on them than have to hand-pick them off of plants.

I usually don't see much PM here on anything except sugar snap peas, but when I do have it on summer garden plants, I sometimes spray them with Green Cure, which is a potassium bicarbonate spray. For me, it seems stronger and more effective than the usual baking soda spray recipes often recommended for organic gardeners.

If I want what I consider to be reliable recipes for home-made organic remedies that are formulated with our hot climate in mind, I go to Howard Garrett's website at dirtdoctor.com. I have found that remedies formulated for milder climates can sometimes burn foliage in our more intense heat and sunlight, but the Dirt Doctor is based in D-FW where the weather is like ours, so I always trust his recipes.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Garlic Barrier