Well, don’t you just love cutworms. After taking care of my calendula seedling for four weeks indoors, watering it once a day, checking for pests, and carefully selecting & planting it in the perfect spot, seeing it laying on the ground the next morning made my blood boil. So I moved away the mulch, dug down about 2 inches deep and found this fat bastard. I yelled at it for a few seconds then I cut it into three pieces ensuring its death and laid its cut up body parts out for all other cutworms to see. Don’t mess with my garden, don't mess with my seedlings or you will be sorry!
I wouldn't say I am a super experienced gardener. My husband built our first raised bed only 6 years ago and before that I had no experience with growing food. I practice the no till, organic, permaculture way of gardening. Growing your own food without pesticides can be tricky enough without mother nature constantly throwing curve balls at you. I have always had issues with cutworms in my garden. I have tried the toilet paper rolls and the plastic cups techniques, but it was just so much extra work and I did not like using so many plastic cups. While doing searches for cutworm prevention, I read that to fully girdle or cut a seedling, the cutworm must have access to the entire circumference of the seedling’s stem. Based on that, my husband suggested trying toothpicks. I inserted five toothpicks or less vertically around each seedling, keeping the toothpicks tightly against the stems of the seedlings and spacing them at an equal distance (see picture below). The toothpicks keep the cutworm away from the stem. What a simple way to deter cutworms and prevent damage to seedlings. This has been my preferred method for a few years now and has worked perfectly ... if I can only remember to place toothpicks around the stems on all the seedlings. This year, I also started to use the longer 4" toothpicks, which can also be described as skewers. These longer toothpicks give me the assurance the seedlings will be protected even deeper into the soil. Cutworms live and explore under the surface. The longer toothpicks really let the destructive worms know they WILL NOT be chopping down anything from my food forest.
