I think I’ve got cutworms in the bean patch. I keep seeding, and they keep germinating, and then something comes along and cuts the stem at the base. It looks suspiciously like cutworms, something I’ve never dealt with before.

Cutworms are the larvae of, you guessed it, cutworm moths.

Kinda cute little guys. But I am not happy. I am tired of reseeding beans, just to have them cut down in their new growth. It’s lucky that I have a generous stash of bean seed saved up from last year to use, because I’m going through it like crazy.

UC IPM says to dig through the soil and search for the pupae and larvae, and remove by hand. So I did that. I want you to picture me, digging through brown dirt, for brown pupae. You see the futility, right? I did not find cutworms. I did find some slugs, though, so my search wasn’t completely in vain.

What I might do, the next time, is plant for a two-fold defense: I will plant very densely (hoping that the sheer volume will cause some to succeed), and I will place little ‘collars’ over the germinating seeds. I was thinking maybe cardboard toilet paper rolls (the inner part) for these, cut into smaller portions, would work. What do you think?

Have you dealt with cutworms? How did you manage them?