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Black cutworms can wreak havoc on your garden, so learn these tips for identification and control.
Identification
How to Identify Cutworms
Cutworms feed on a wide variety of vegetables and flowers, so any young seedlings or transplants will be susceptible. To identify cutworms, try patrolling your garden at dusk or during the evening and inspect around the bases of plants. They are also partial to cloudy days.
Different species range in color—grey, pink, green, and black—and can be as long as 2 inches. They can be solid, spotted, or striped. They tend be curled up when they are not on the move. Cutworms are stealthy and tend to feed only at night, hiding during daylight hours.
Black cutworms, Agrotis ipsilon, are one of the most common cutworms. They have small dark spots on their bodies and mature into the dark sword-grass moth.
Variegated cutworms, Peridroma saucia, are another common species. They are mottled brown and have a faint white stripe down their backs.
Adult cutworms are moths of dark wing colors. They are usually brown or gray and get to be about 1½ inches long with a 1½-inch wing length. Keep an eye out for the adults, because the females will lay eggs in dry soil after they mate.
Identifying Cutworm Damage
Cutworms chew through plant stems at the base. They primarily feed on roots and foliage of young plants and will even cut off the plant from underneath the soil. In most cases, entire plants will be destroyed; they do a lot of damage in no time at all. Even if only the bottom of the plant is destroyed, the top will often shrivel and die.
In the summer, cutworms sometimes crawl to the tops of plants and do damage there. Be careful not to mistake this damage for slug or cabbage worm damage.
Still unsure? Try our Plant Problem ID tool to quickly diagnose pests and diseases.
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Are they found near an outside door, or near something that has been brought in from outside? Do you have any potted plants in the house (perhaps not in that particular room) or anything that has soil? It is rare to find cutworms inside the home, although it does sometimes occur. They are not a house pest. Perhaps a moth may have gotten inside and laid eggs in the soil of a potted plant? The larvae may then have hatched and are roaming to look for food. Or, some may come inside if the door is open (or they may hitch a ride on the door edge), seeking warmth to pupate.
Repeated applications of lime can disturb your soil's pH balance, which can affect nutrient availability for plants. Too much lime can also be detrimental to the health of beneficial microbes in the soil. Applications should be made based on recommendations that might come out of a soil test.
First of all, we recommend the cutworm collars (above) when the seedlings are first set up. Once your tomato plants' stem is the thickness of a pencil, you can throw the collars out.
Yes, you can use DE, too. Just scatter it around the plant. If cutworms are a big problem, consider a Wall O' Water. Search on Amazon.com.
Multiple chemical applications negatively impacts the health of your soil, which is key to a healthy lawn. After a good rain, go out after dark with a flashlight and handpick as many of the cutworms as you can (drown them in soapy water). They don't like dry soils, so water well in the mornings. Release beneficial nematodes, which will attack the cutworms (given your soil is likely not biologically rich, it may take some time and a few releases to start to establish a healthy population). The moths should be dealt with as soon as you see them: release tricogramma wasps weekly for three consecutive weeks--they will parasitize cutworm eggs. Apply Eco-bran on the lawn surface to attract (and kill) catapillars.
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