Squash blossom end rot

[JC's Garden]

I have yellow crookneck in ground and in containers. The container plants are getting a fungus on the old blossoms, male & female. I have been careful not to water the leaves and blossoms, they are over the edge of the container. Don't want to use Neem because bees are hard to come by. Could the answer be as simple as hosing down the affected areas? The in ground plants do get hosed down when I water them and the plants around them.
Anyone have any thoughts?

[JC's Garden]

Okay, just grabbed a green leaf to move it out of my way, it pulled out. I tore it open and found a squash vine borer inside the stem. Well that's a fine howdy do!

[Lindsaylew82]

It's common in my garden for the flowers to get fuzzy. They get a black fuzzy mold on them. Almost all the flowers get this, and I've never had an issue with the actual fruit spoiling, unless it didn't get pollinated. In that case, the blossom and baby squash get moldy.

It's never caused an issue for me.

[Lindsaylew82]

I hate SVB!

[JC's Garden]

It's only 4 plants in these containers. They all have SVB and the black fungus. The fungus is actually causing the blossom half of eating size squash to rot. Time to cut my losses. I have squash in other locations to fall back on. I try not to put all my eggs in one basket.

[JC's Garden]

Yesterday morning I had 14 yellow crookneck plants. The SVBs were worse than I thought. Down to 4 plants as of now.

[Lindsaylew82]

Awe... Sorry.

You could remove the SVB...and then pile up a bunch of dirt around the stem crown... You might get a few more vegetables from your plants.

Back to the mold... You can do a calcium foliar spray for BER.
I make mine like this...
2 tbsp dried milk
8 chamomile tea bags steeped in 4 cups of water.
Add that to 4 more cups of water for a total of about a half gallon. Spray the leaves. It will NOT help fruit already affected.

I get blossom end rot more often (for tomatoes) when water becomes inconsistent. Your SVB are making water unavailable to the plants... I'm sure that this is super frustrating!

Whenever I get a plant that succumbs to SVB, I pull it and dig the little beasts out. Plop! Into the suds...

[JC's Garden]

Thanks Lindsay, I'll have to try the spray out. As I was pulling up the worst ones, I was piling on the dirt. Even if they looked healthy, the crowns got some dirt. On a positive note, I just planted pickles and tomatilloes where they were.

[imafan26]

Glad the SVB hasn't found my squash yet. However, after waiting forever for one of my zucchini to finally produce fruit, now two zucchini in production may be more zucchini than I can handle. Luckily, I know a few people who still want zucchini.