Brugmansias and Cutworms....Nasty Nocturnal Pests!

Meet the nastiest brugmansia pest you may never know about. Do you wake up in the morning to find your leaves chewed but when you examine the plant during the day there is no sign of any little green catipillars or white dusty beatle bugs, there is no slime so you figure it's not snails or slugs? You spray your garden, yet still everynight there is more devastation and it gets worse as time goes by...

Then you probably have a CUTWORM!!! If it were not for an experiance that Delisa had years ago and shared with us I would never have even thought about this critter. Cutworms are caterpillars of moths. The kicker is that the live underground during the day. So when you are searching your plant for any pests that may be responsible they are sleeping comfortably in the soil of your pot just waiting for darkness to fall and the dinner bell to ring...but who knew???

I noticed damage on my Mon Amour du Mariel getting worse every night. i would remove all the damaged leaves to find more every morning ...i searched every inch of the soil surface and the undersides of the leaves and nothing...sprayed it, put systemic granuels on it...nothing,,,more damage every day. Then I remembered what Delisa had told us about a similar experiance she had.

So, last night I set my alarm for one in the morning. Went out into the garden in my bathrobe, flip flops and a headlamp flashlight. Low and behold on the underside of the leaves was the fatest caterpillar i have seen. He was cold and had no hair on his body, but the jaws used to chomp on my plant were clearly visible. These guys can devour your plant in a short period of time...They are called CUTWORMS because one day you may wake up and find the main green stem of your plant has been cut in half as he chewed thru the juiciest part of your plant....as if your leaves weren't bad enough!

So be on the look out for repeated nocturnal damage to your leaves and stem with no other visible source for the problem. They are easy to spot but it has to be late at night. Then you can pluck them off by hand. They usually curl into a "C" position for protection.

Here are pictures of what my cutworm used to look like...........now he is a stain on my pavers

Here he is in the defensive curl...no defense from my big foot however

Hey, there was half a brug in the belly of that beast!!

This message was edited Feb 22, 2011 6:56 AM

Thanks for the info! I don't have any growing right now, but will watch for them this spring!

Thank you for the heads up, Gary. One caterpillar did all that damage? Did you try BT?

Betty, what is BT please?

I did pour that into the soil...it seemed to energize him...he ate more the next night....I was talking to Liz and she said that she had an incident where she put out a whole tray of new seedlings and in one night every one of them were decapitated by one cutworm...their appetite is unbelievable.

BT aka. Bacillus Thuringiensis is used in caterpillar control...good to use when you are starting seedlings or cuttings and are dealing with fungus gnat larvae eating at your roots. A diluted solution is poured into the soil. Maybe i didn't use enough and it didn't sink down to whatever level he was buried at...the best solution is to hand pick late at night, they are really easy to spot and can get rather large too.

This message was edited Feb 22, 2011 12:37 PM

Ah! Thanks for the info on the BT - I wasn't aware of that one, and those fungus gnats love my brug cuttings. :/

I did find one of those worms yesterday too. Ugly things.