Dang Cutworms!

I was going to call the post Bloody Cutworms, but cutworms don't bleed. They shoot out a green liquid when they are squished. I have been squishing tons of cutworms in my garden this year. I have never seen such a bad year as this. I have done a lot of reading on how to get rid of cutworms and the consensus is there is not much that can be done.

One suggestion is to spread ashes or eggshells through out your garden. I don't like this idea because it might change your soil. I'm not well versed in the nutrients and ph of soil, but I know you want to keep your soil as healthy as possible. I have never gotten my soil tested, but it is something I should do.

The other suggestion is to put collars around your plants so that the cutworms can't cut the plant. In a home garden this might work, but a market garden not so much. As much as I want a fall income I don't exactly like the idea of putting cups or toilet rolls around 5,000 pumpkin plants. Also collars won't work with plants that are just coming up. The cutworms went for my beans, sunflowers, and onions.

So what does work? My best solution has been to till, hoe and weed. Time consuming, but it's work that needs to get done anyways. As I'm tilling or hoeing I watch for cutworms and kill them. I'm also thinking tilling might bury them so deep that they don't have a food source and it might make the cutworms into jello (the blades cutting the cutworms). Hoeing slices the cutworms and brings them to the surface so you can squish them. As I was weeding my strawberry bed, 150 feet, I killed over 300 cutworms.

Another idea I read about is using diatomaceous earth or BT. I find both of these ideas to be pretty useless. The BT doesn't work immediately so the cutworms will continue to do damage. The DE the worms didn't die. So what to do about cutworms? SQUISH!!!! Go on a treasure hunt and SQUISH!!