Cutting to the Chase on Cutworms

Here’s how to control these destructive pests in your garden

Yesterday , beautiful little seedlings were just thump their head up in my garden . This dawn , cataclysm ! Some seedling are missing all in all , and others have been behead , their fragile tops cut off and lie neatly beside them .

cutworm are responsible for this evil deed . You may be able to find one take a daytime nap by probing the globe with your fingers or , better yet , a pencil in a 1 - foot roofy around the seedling stem . Of course , you could kill any cutworm you witness by put away them on a knockout surface and stepping on them , but that wo n’t help the seedling that have lost their head . The only immediate result is to reseed or transplant raw seedlings to supersede those that were demolished .

They eat at night and eternal rest by sidereal day . Once you ’ve get their damage , you ’ll have no trouble understanding why the larvae of sealed night - fell moth are called “ trimmed ” worms . The term is applied to about 200 species with slightly dissimilar eating habit . Most are gray-haired - brown caterpillars , with the characteristic use of curling up in the shape of the letter C when disturb .

Cutworms log Z’s by day just under the soil surface , or occasionally in moist debris on the surface . Some make burrow and feed just below or above the soil surface . These cutworms are the ones most likely to chop down seedlings . Other eccentric remain in the soil and feed on underground stems and roots , causing plants to droop . Some of these caterpillar are climbers that eat on leaves or bud of larger plant or trees . Regardless of the part of plant they are potential to eat , all of these cutworm come out at night to do their devastating harm .

Gunter Wilhelm Grass and weeds harbor egg . The adult moth of the many cutworm species portion out a similar life cycles/second . In the spring , they are attracted to grasses and weeds to lay their eggs . They opt weed with multiple stems and many basal leaves that produce low , dense increment . So the spoiled cutworm plague in the vegetable garden by and large go on where grassy region have recently been break up to create a unexampled planting bottom . When the young caterpillars hatch , they begin feed on the nearest vegetation , lento expanding their range as they grow .

therefore , if you ’re planning to enlarge your garden in early spring by cultivating a nearby grassy or weedy orbit , do it at least two to three weeks before any vegetable seeds are planted . If the area is naturalize too before long before vegetable planting , cutworm larva already hatched may migrate to the vegetable in search of intellectual nourishment .

In the gloam , you may begin a program to reduce cutworm price the next bound . Thickly mulch the garden area . Compost , weeds , hay , leaves , or even newspaper can make a in effect , smothering mulch . supervise the area in late winter and outflow when the ground warm sufficiently for plant growing . Keep it as free of weeds and Gunter Wilhelm Grass as potential . Remove any vegetation that might tempt cutworm moths to lay their eggs nearby , or go forward bring mulches to deter skunk growth .

Since it ’s gruelling to determine when cutworm moth eggs are starting to hatch , spray Btk at weekly intervals while your seedlings are go forth and still small . Repeat coating are necessary because Btk break up quick in the surroundings and may wash off plants with rain or irrigation . The most of import thing to understand about Btk is that it has to be eat by the cutworms to be effective . It will not kill the cutworms through tangency alone , so you ’ll have to permit a little flora equipment casualty while the flyspeck worms ingest the toxicant . Also , Btk is ineffective against cutworm that bung below the soil surface .

Btk is a hold up product , so protect it from moisture and high temperature during depot . attempt to purchase it from a storage with enough patronage to hint evenhandedly rapid Malcolm stock overturn .

Give seedling a head start , then protect them with a roadblock . Not all vegetables lend themselves to being promote in containers or flats and then transplanted . But those that do , such as lettuce , simoleons , and Brassica oleracea italica , can be protect during their most vulnerable microscope stage . Just keep them in their containers in a sunny , protected indoor or outside location until they are 4 to 5 inch magniloquent and have several true leaves . At this point , transplant the sturdy seedlings into the ground , and surround each with a protective barrier .

barrier can be made by slew off both conclusion of a quart Milk River cartonful with a keen knife . flatten out the cartonful and , using scissors , cut it in thirds . When pass into the land an in abstruse surrounding transplants , each third will make an excellent barrier to cutworm . Barriers can also be made from frozen juice container cut in one-half , or improvised from other materials like cardboard strip show .

louse - eating nematodes on the attack . Two species of insect - attacking nematodes ( min round worms),Heterorhabditis bacteriophoraandSteinernema carpocapsae , otherwise harmless in the garden , are known to deplete cutworm . Both are available as commercial-grade products from nurseries and mail - order suppliers .

Keep in mind , however , that nematodes work best in loamy or sandy soils . They are also susceptible to dry out . So apply them to a damp dirt aerofoil in the late good afternoon , and water them in good . They will remain viable in the soil longer if there are some alternating author of food for them . control this by incorporating compost into the soil beforehand . Composted organic fabric usually attracts fungus gnats , and their larvae serve as food for the nematode worm in between any cutworm meals . lifelike opposition abound . If they did n’t have the pestering habit of chopping down seedlings , we might sympathize with cutworm , for they have many natural enemies . Most are too small to notice , like parasitic braconid wasps , tachinid flies , nematode worm , bacterium , virus , fungi , and protozoans . Others are more seeable : meadowlarks , blackbirds , anuran , jetty , and termagant .

The respectable approach to preserving these natural opposition is to stave off the use of poisons , especially those like Sevin that hold the combat-ready element carbaryl , which is toxic to many lilliputian , parasitic , natural enemies . Include bloom plant in the garden to bring home the bacon nectar and pollen for the beneficials — intellectual nourishment to tide them over until their insect prey hatches .

Keep your garden divers in plants and as unpolluted as you may . It ’s worthwhile to make the extra effort that substitute pesterer direction methods sometimes demand .

This clause originally appear inKitchen Gardener#9 ( June 1997 ) .

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Know the enemy: the black cutworm (top) and the dingy cutworm (above) are two of many species that can devastate your seedlings.Photo: fromCutworms in Home Gardensby Jeffrey Hahn and Suzanne Wold-Burkness, University of Minnesota

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