Cutworm Combat

TheSeed, Member

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While I was asleep, cutworms went to work - and didn't even have the decency to yell "Timber!" So I awoke to find a few empty places in a promising stand of sunflower seedlings, young plants keeled over flat, severed at the base as cleanly as if it had been done with a micro-chainsaw. There's an easy fix.

I was just "too busy" to do the little bit of preventive work that would have stopped the cutworms, which emerge hungry from the gound in the spring. I always hope these pests aren't around. And I'm usually wrong. But now I've taken the time to fit the seedlings with their own special collars -- made from granola bar boxes. It's a little technique I learned from Kitchen Gardener great George Bria, who used the method to protect his broccoli seedlings. Take about a 2 and a half inch wide strip of the box, cut it long enough to wrap around the plant, cut a slit in one end to slip in and hold the other end, and then push the collar into the ground an inch or so. The barrier works. Just do it in the first place and save yourself some needless seedling mortality. You'll sleep better.

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Veggie Gardener: Season Two

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I like using the Earthboxes