Apparently squash plants have a nasty moth that likes to lay their eggs in the stem of the plant where their larva later eat out the core of the stem making the squash plants do all sorts of things other than produce healthy fruit. This also works as a definition of my squash plants.

Being a first time squash gardener, I asked someone else and they told me the above and then what to do about it now. Dig out the worm then bury the part of the stem you cut open. Not a surgeon so I am going with plan b, go back in time and throw row cover over the top of it for the first six weeks to keep the moth from getting to the plant. A valuable lesson learned for this fall.

I am going to keep the squash plants around because they are still trying to make squash just not as vigorously as they normally would.