Julia Altshuler said:

Instead of making a mound in the vegetable garden in back, we thought we'd plant
in a half whiskey barrel in the front yard. Maybe the borers will have trouble
finding the plant if we hide.

They live to find squash plants. They can run, but they can't hide.

I'd like to avoid chemicals if I could though I'm
willing to use them if the zucchini bread warrants. I've read in The New
Victory Garden an idea for foiling the borers-- literally. One puts a mat of
aluminum foil around the base of the squash vines. The idea is either to
confuse the moth by reflecting a bright light in its eyes or to cook the eggs to
an uncomfortable temperature. In any case, has anyone tried this? Does it
work? It sounds too good to be true, a simple non-chemical solution to the
problem.

"If it sounds too good to be true..."

Normally, I hand-pick the eggs and fish out and freshly-hatched borers that
escape my egg search.

This year, I may not be able to do that (I have surgery scheduled for mid-June and
after that I won't be able to put my head down for a while). I may try the aluminum
foil trick because I have to do *something* (or else we have to used canned
squash for the 'pumpkin' waffles and bought zucchini for zucchini bread).

Then today there's a new development. I ran into a neighbor today, another
hobbyist gardener but one with lots more experience than I have. He said that
zucchini was a sure thing crop, one that nothing could go wrong with. He said
that whatever my troubles were in the past, they weren't squash vine borers
because zucchini don't vine.

Oh, that's a good one. He have any more tall tales you can pass on? 8^)

Zucchini are MORE vulnerable to squash vine borers than vining
squash are because they have only one main stem. When that goes,
the whole plant dies. Vining squash will root at many places as they
run along the ground, so loosing the main stem won't always kill them.

My eye-witness testimony from my own many years experience:

Squash vine borer moths DO lay eggs on zucchini plants, the eggs DO
hatch, the borers DO enter the zucchini stem, and the plants WILL die
if you don't interrupt this process.
--
Pat in Plymouth MI

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(attributed to Don Marti)