This is Weed and this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. Yes, and we’re an organic gardening show Focusing on the benefits of gardening. That’s right And we like to encourage you to go out there and grow your own food because growing your own food keeps you healthy and is therapeutic for you and we get a real kick out of Reusing things and keeping gardening a little bit up. You know as inexpensive as we can that’s right and inspected as possible
Right, right. Well today I’m gonna vent because we’re going to discuss the cut worm and it is I have always had a problem with this critter and It’s a caterpillar turns into a nasty moth. See I’m upset Nothing’s more they do the damage at night. They love nice succulent little seedlings corn tomato Anything you stick in the ground that comes up on its
own outside You know, you have it if you come out one morning and and a beautiful little sunflower seedling that wasn’t Into too tall is now toppled over or just disappeared cut in half generally is what they why they’re called cut worms They’re not worms at all. They are caterpillars of different types of moths, right and they’re they’re really annoying fortunately I’ve over the years I’ve just plant extra sunflowers because
I know I’m going to lose some but this year when I noticed it happening I decided to try to organically Go after them, you know, I have a question for you Do you think I would enjoy gardening so much if there if there were no challenges out there? That if there were no bugs going after things no deer going after things would it be as much fun? That’s hard to say. Yeah, because gardening is a challenge folks particularly if you try to do it organically and
The cut worm is just one of many things that you’re up against I think gardening might be a bit more rewarding if we didn’t have all these pests and creditors right attacking our plants Well, you you you don’t have as much of a problem with the the that’s right I have never really had a problem with cut worms and that is because I remove all the leaf litter around my plants and I’d like to bring this up again We had an episode earlier about whether whether we should raise
or not to raise and it turns out you really should rake and get all the leaves out from under the shrubs and out of your beds because that is where bad bugs overwinter in other words they stay there through the winter and then they come out and eat your stuff well reading up on these cut worms they hide in the leaf litter as well and then they come out at night to eat the plants because they’re basically protecting themselves from being eaten themselves I read about one species I think it was
in the Pennsylvania Ag Extension website that burrows into the soil during the day and it will disappear your seedling it will literally pull it in pull the whole plant into the ground down into this burrow and you’ll come out in the morning and like I like to do with my cup of coffee every morning and check by what’s coming up and you’ll go and say oh there was a sunflower plant there and it’s gone and
this article confirmed that that can happen well I think if you find that that’s the problem you need to dig up that soil and get rid of that soil because you know that rub is only going to be a few inches down okay I always get around it by growing extra stuff figuring I’m going to you know sort of like a sea turtle laying a hundred eggs knowing that only one or two will survive of course I don’t know if they lay that many eggs but I plant extra plants that are
acceptable to this and this year I it’s too late now to pull up all the little small leaves that I miss I’m using I’m spraying it and I’m using how do you pronounce it diet diet makes earth earth which is a it’s isn’t a clay like something I don’t know what exactly it is but it’s supposed to be a non-toxic and I think the worms just hate it or the caterpillar just hates it so it’s probably a clay like so we’ll see
I’ll have some flowers but I won’t have as many as I had originally planted all right folks so take away from this is a plant extra seeds remove your leaf litter yeah yeah before you plant right in the planters and everything and you can learn to identify this caterpillar and crush it and and you can get a magnifying glass and look for eggs I haven’t found out if neem oil works on it yet but I’m going to try that
uh… okay well the best thing to do would be to remove your leaf litter that’s the first and uh… say break the soil around your plants right lightly because they will be writing in your plan and another thing I’m doing I’m saving my eggshells and crushing them and putting them around the plants as well because uh… slugs and caterpillars don’t like that don’t like uh… sharp objects to crawl over right so I’m doing that as well alright folks well thanks for listening again and
tune in next week because we are weed and whack and we’ll be back take care