You're listening to the Joe Gardner Show, the podcast all about gardening, where we cover

everything you need to know to grow like a pro, no experience required.

And now here's your guide, National Gardening Television Host, and the Joe Behind Joe Gardner,

Joe Lampel.

Hi everybody, this is Joe Lampel, the Joe Behind Joe Gardner, and welcome to the Joe Gardner

Show.

Well, this may be the first, or one of only a few episodes we've ever done, devoted

to one entire insect, and really more specifically bug.

The correct term for what we're talking about today is the squash bug, and a bug is a

subset of an insect, and the bug has unique properties, such as a piercing, sucking mouth

part, like a straw that sucks the juices out of plants.

And the squash bug is the one we're talking about today, and it is so prolific across

the country into Canada, down into Mexico, all over North America.

And it really is a pest of summer, and it's tough, as you're going to learn, insecticides

really don't have any impact on them in the adult stage.

So it requires a lot of proactive recon to get ahead of there being a real problem in

your garden.

So when we decided to do a dedicated episode on this, we reached out to somebody that

knows a lot about squash bugs, and that is Diane Alston, PhD, and professor and department

head in the biology department at Utah State University.

And her real specialty is integrated pest management, insect ecology, and plant insect interactions.

I mean, how much better of a combination can you get for what we're talking about today?

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