After a long day of planting you return to the house and have yourself a nice sit down, proud of the hard work you've put in that day. Pat yourself on the back and have a nice cold drink. You reminisce about the days events and feel a little relief knowing that you are that much closer to the finish line. Another step closer to completing your planting duties for the season. You sleep well, rise early and head up to the garden ready to make further progress. A little hop accompanies your step as you mentally lay out the days strategy. Upon reaching the garden you notice something different. Something seems to be missing. Where you though you planted seedlings yesterday now only has a few seedlings surrounded by stems..hmmm. Upon further inspection you in fact find just a stem remaining of what was a beautiful little green seedling as if it had been cut. You see the wilted tops laying on the ground next to it. As if someone had come by with scissors and just cut the little guys and left them to die..Again and again you find just stems...one..after another. What the hell????
Was it aliens? Sasquatch, perhaps? The punk kids across the street??
Nooooo, sorry. I'm afraid you have been hit by cut worms. <---follow link! Interesting stuff!!
See.. while you slept, an evil force was at work destroying a good portion of your hard work and making what you did yesterday seem like it never happened.. Cut worms are devastating and annoying little bastards that can do some serious damage in a short amount of time. If I plant 100 cabbage seedling one day I could have to replace 60-70 (I'm being conservative) of them the next day due to cut worms. I've seen a single worm take out 11 seedlings in a row in just one night. Imagine what multiple worms could do...
Here's one of the dirty little buggers I found. Since we use plastic mulch it is pretty easy to spot the empty holes. When I see that cut worms have been at work I start digging. I dig down and dig up the cut seedling with my hand and throw the hand full of dirt on the plastic and spread it out. Cut worms never go far from where they feed. If there's no worm I move onto the one next to it and so on. Finally after 5-6-7-8-9 empty holes down the row I usually find the bastard. Then I squash it and move on.
here's a beautiful cabbage seedling
Here's a seedling that has been cut. As you can see just the stem remains. :(
The cut seedling close up.
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| Here I threw a handful of dirt onto the plastic and found the worm center right. |
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| Up close |
They're pretty nasty little creatures and something you don't want in your garden. So? What do you do about them? I hear certain cover crops grown in the fall will prevent them from seeking out your spread. I haven't tested this personally so I don't know for sure, but there are plenty of remedies natural and non natural and I'll leave it up to you to decide which one is best (follow the link above for more info). There are natural pesticides and physical barriers etc. I use a jar and a flashlight some folks use nuclear grade pesticides, but I wouldn't want to eat their cabbage ;) Thanks for reading!
