Learn tips on how to successfully start tomato plants from seed packets. From the Southwest Yard & Garden series.
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Question by Candace Beard: How do I kill the cutworm below ground w/o huritng my tomato plants?
I have lost 5 tomato plants and 6 pepper plants. Some plants disappear and the full grown tomato plants stems are cut off at the ground. I need help before I lose all of them.
Best answer:
Answer by styrckt
wrap aluminum foil around the base of the plant …cheap and foolproof
What do you think? Answer below!
I have tiny ickle tomato plants coming up! (Yes, that’s a dollar store baking sheet under it. I wasn’t using them.) http://t.co/5BmWW0EnG4 – by adsartha (Anna Williams)
Tomato planting
Image by timlewisnm
dig out a little of the soil around the stem and wrap the stem with aluminum foil then put the soil back.
A cut worm eats the plant off at the soil surface. It does not eat the whole plant.
A pocket gopher will tunnel under a Tomato or Pepper plant and start with the roots, and pull the entire plant under and eat it. If your plants are disappearing, you probably have a gopher problem.
Carefully remove the dirt where a plant disappeared. Try to find the gophers tunnel without caving it in. Set off a gopher bomb inside the tunnel and cover the bomb back up. The burning sulfur from the bomb will cause the gopher to move to someone elses yard.
Ranger C is right. Cut worms only attack very young plants just at the soil surface and they certainly don’t eat the whole plant. Gophers can eat entire plants from below ground (I have watched them pull an onion plant down and keep eating it until it disappeared), and are very hard to control. The bombs or traps are your only option and neither one will harm your remaining plants.