Cutworms? Something Is Loose In The Garden

These are new beds so for some reason I didn’t expect to have a problem with cutworms.  Well, not so.  In at least 2 of my raised beds, I have numerous peppers that have been cut off at the ground.  I have also found a few cucumber seedlings and Chinese Long Red beans that have also been cut off.

The picture shows the cinched stem there at the ground level.  That healthy green stem ends with a constriction and grayish tissue.  I have sprinkled diatomaceous earth around the pepper stems where there are damaged peppers.  Well see if it does any good.  I sprinkled the DE earlier today and it is raining hard tonight.  Fortunately, only a few of my peppers have been damaged – maybe 5%.   A couple of the peppers seem to still be alive, but laying down because their stem has been damaged.  I’ll let them grow as they lay and see if they ever produce.

I have started all of these peppers from seeds that I save each year and I don’t like them to be damaged.  I do keep a thick leaf mulch on the soil, but I don’t think that affects the cutworm.  It is going to live in the soil anyway.  The mulch may even make it more difficult to find a plant stem?

Lettuce After The Rabbits Visited

Last winter rabbits ate all of my lettuce and spinach growing in this bed.  These few cos lettuce plants regrew, as did 2 spinach plants at the far end of the bed – top right of this pic.

It is time to pick this lettuce – I don’t need the seeds so I’m not going to let it go to seed.  I planted peppers, basil, onions and squash around the lettuce.  (The peppers and onions were started from seed.  These basil are volunteers.)

Those are t-posts holding up a 16 foot cattle panel that the winter squash planted directly under it is going to grow up on.  I keep my beds heavily mulched with old leaves.  Raised beds are not the best idea here in hot, dry Texas, but it is how I have chosen to grow my garden in this red CLAY soil here.