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scottokieman

2013 Cutworm Casualty List

ScottOkieman
10 years ago

This year is shaping up to be a very bad year for cutworms. While hoeing the garden I have found a lot of them. My mom called this morning to warn me that she has found a lot. And on another thread George posted that he found multiple cutworms when planting just one tomato.

In anticipation of the onslaught of cutworm casualties, I've created this thread so we can all lament our poor plants sudden demise.

Also, use this thread to post information concerning solutions you have found or are trying.

Cutworms are a yearly spring time aggravation. This year may be worse than others. This thread is a place to grieve and gripe...and find solace and solutions.

Comments (6)

  • ReedBaize
    10 years ago

    I have found several as well. Being that I'm not an organic gardener, I've coated the backyard with a heavy dose of Malathion.

  • susanlynne48
    10 years ago

    Reed, IMHO, using BT kurstaki would be effective, and much less toxic, speaking in "green" terms. Just a suggestion.

    I had meant to mention the cutworm issue a couple weeks ago when my GD and I were putting in her herb garden. Seemed like there were inordinate numbers in the soil, or on the soil, guess I should say.

    How big were your plants, and at what point are they large enough to deter the cutworms? Or, do we just need to take precautions until the worm season has passed? Guess I need to make some TP collars.

    Susan

  • Erod1
    10 years ago

    Ok, so are you guys saying that cutworms live in the soil? I know virtually nothing about them, other than what they look like, when i turned my little tomato patch a few weeks ago and added some powdered goat poop to it, i didnt see any green worms at all, but then again, i wasnt looking for any. Maybe i just dont have any? I have only ever discovered 3 or 4 in my tomato patch.

    I will turn the dirt one more time before i plant and will look for them this time when i do, and i guess my question is, am i looking for the big green worm or would it look like something else at this point?

    Thanks

    Em

  • mulberryknob
    10 years ago

    Em, cutworms are neither big or green. (Hornworms are big and green, but they eat tomato plants) Cutworms are up to an inch or slightly more long, greyish brownish and when disturbed they curl up into a tight C shape. They live in the soil, especially under grass and weeds and come up at night and crawl on their backs til they find a stem and up they go, wrap around it and cut it in two. Collars put around the plants (bottomless paper cups or toilet paper tubes cut in two) or spent match sticks two next to every stem on opposite sides can deter them.

    Tilling the garden in the fall and keeping it free of weeds and then tilling twice before planting in the spring will kill a lot of them. I found most of the ones I killed this spring under winter weeds, chickweed and henbit.

  • ScottOkieman
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    A heads up on another pest. Today I found 4 Colorado Potato Beetles on my potatoes. I usually start looking for them when the potatoes start blooming. They're not close to blooming, but the beetles are here nonetheless. So, ya'll might want to start checking your potato plants.

    I've also seen some flea beetles on my plants. That's normal for this time of year though.

    So far I have not lost any plants to cutworms. I've just seen a goodly number of them while hoeing weeds around my potatoes. All of them I found met an untimely demise....

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    10 years ago

    Last year was the worst cutworm year ever, and we had several kinds of cutworms too. I usually don't see very many, but had to spray Bt 'kurstaki' last year or I wouldn't have had a garden at all. It was the first time in our then 14 years of gardening here that I had to spray the whole garden with Bt.

    This winter and spring, I tried to rototill every planting area 4 times, about once every 2 weeks, in order to expose soil-dwelling pests to cold air. I killed a lot of cutworms during that time and haven't found many at all since I started planting. Some of the ones I found were curled up underneath the boards that border our raised beds. I took great delight in finding and killing those.

    I use cutworm collars when planting. With some plants, I put toothpicks or twigs or bamboo skewers on either side of the stems where the stems come up out of the ground. These materials keep a cutworm from being able to totally wrap itself around a plant.

    I haven't seen any CPB damage yet, but I'm watching for them. Most years, I have turtles come into the garden and eat them...and we do have a lot of turtles around this year. When we do have a bad outbreak of them, it usually is because I ignored the early ones I saw and they began reproducing like mad while I was busy ignoring them. I always try to hand-pick and destroy them when I see them.

    I seldom see flea beetles at all unless I put tomato plants in the ground while it is still pretty cold, or unless I plant eggplant. We don't eat much eggplant so I don't grow it.

    We have fire ants, and I have seen scorpions twice already in the garden. One bit me today and a scorpion bite hurts like mad! I have a garden full of birds and I suspect they are busy eating pesky insects that I'd rather not have around. I generally have a garden full of insects and just let the good insects take care of the bad ones, which works about 90% of the time.

    Oh, we have had tent caterpillars in the fruit trees too, and mosquitoes everywhere thanks to our hot temperatures and abundant rainfall.

    Dawn