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cut worms

479 Views 4 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  Throkmorton, 
R
I noticed cut worms on my tomato plants this morning ... I plucked four off of three different plants. We were gone for four days, and this is the first I've noticed them. I see the brown trial running down the stems of one plant and I have tell tale cut worm "poop" on the ground and in the pot.

We had these last year, and I thought I had taken measures this year to make sure they left my plants alone ...

Other than plucking them off, any suggestions? I don't want to use any chemicals on the plants.

Also, does anybody know if the "poop" leads to anything - they aren't secretely passing eggs or larva or something, are they? I'd hate to think that this is an endless loop ...

Thanks in advance!
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A
I was told you can place a nail near the base of a plant or tinfoil because they have to get around it to cut it. An older farmer told me that, but I never did it because they seemed to go after I planted marigolds, onions, and garlic.
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M
Yup, putting a twig or something like that next to the stems where they come out of the ground will make it so they can't wrap around the stem to cut it. That's what my grandmother told me to do and she grows a LOT of tomatoes
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They're not cutworms ... they're horn worms ... I read the other thread about someone elses tomato problems, they mentioned a horn worm, and sure enough, that is what I've got.

I always thought my cutworms didn't look exactly like those pictured on the internet, but just chalked it up to different varieties or something.

Now, off to figure out how to rid my garden of those little suckers.
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T
Yep, those are horn worms. Boy, are they ever gross. Small boys will happily smoosh them because their guts are green, FYI.
I don't know what the solution is. We use rotenone, which is actually naturally-derived and approved for use in organic gardens. pyretherin is another recommended safer spray.
Last year, before the novelty wore off we got the boys (6,5 and 3 at the time) to pluck them off, paying them a nickel per worm.
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