All right this is war!

My Big Zac was just chopped right in half, and I suspect it's cut worms, this time, plus something has been digging into my containers, the one's without mulch covers, a white cat slinked up the fence when it saw me, so it's probably the culprit. I was going to skip the beneficial nematodes, as I have a lot of expenses; but, I'm thinking after reading up on them that I will order them anyways for the around the 6th, as that will be a few weeks since I added fertilizers to my potting mix, no need to mositen the potting mix as it should be moist in the containers, and I'll just spray them directly into the containers, then find them ant hills and spray directly on them. I'd like to know how them cutworms got in my containers, I solarized that potting mix and used fresh Jungle Grow, which isn't as easy as the coconut coir (sniffles); but I ran out of that. I mean, I didn't just dump the stuff into the containers, I smoothed it out getting all the chunks out of it, so where did the cut worms come from? And, after plants get to a certain size, don't the cut worms leave them alone, these plants are nice size plants.
joy

I know you prefer organic but sometimes you must use chemicals like Ortho Insect Spray.As far as the cat is concerned buy Cat Scat or other brand name. It is panther urine diluted of course and it will keep her away but not hurt her. All are available at your local gardening store.

I've heard that cayenne pepper sprinkled around plants will also deter animals from digging - is that true?

TPlant - glad you're able to get online. Hope you're feeling well, darlin'....

I'm hurting a lot because I had to stop taking aspirin and my old standby celebrex plus plavix. Celebrex used to help a lot but had to stop because it contains aspirin and plavix thins my blood so therefore my best painkillers had to be stopped. Viacadin does help. The big day is Wednesday.

Joy - Your problem might be birds. I have so many earthworms that Robins think this is their home! I found a tomato transplant that had been almost cut in half. I looked for a cutworm, but found none, so I suspect a Robin snipped it. I don't usually have cutworm problems.

I keep spares of transplants so I can easily replace ones that are lost.

Honeybee: You could be right, I love my birds, their favorite snack is my worst arch enemy "the horned catepillar", haven't seen many of them in the past 3 years, as the birds get them before I do. The reason I don't want the cat, not to mention even though cat owners claim they are clean animals, my containers are not kitty litter boxes. Just this week a boxer came prancing up my ramp to my front deck, someone just left him in our neighborhood, my thoughts were "hmmm, maybe I should let him stay in my backyard for a bit, see if he can take of the cat problem". I haven't seen the cat lately, but maybe if I set up the picnic table in the back back yard with my chairs and then put in a light for the yard, I might be able to arm myself with a baseball bat and see just what comes over that fence. I've been putting out pine straw and then topping that off with cypress mulch on top of the plastic bisqueen I put in between my rows of tomatoes, it will keep weeds out and also keep me from slipping and breaking my neck on the slick plastic when it rains right?
joy

joy112854 - you could call animal control and have them pick up the cat.

Hmmm.... maybe :(

Honeybee: Animal control would ask me to set a cage and catch it then call them. That was what they told me to do when I had 3 stray dogs under my bedroom window every morning at 3 am fighting for a week straight. I was tempted to ask them if I could get a paintball gun and mark the dogs they needed to pick up for them. It's not the animals fault, it's the owners' fault and it is really inconsiderate of animal owners to allow their animals to do this sort of thing. Of course, the animal owners stand ready to sue any land owner who might hurt their animals that they themselves neglect by not keeping an eye on them, animals and the damage they do to others property should be the animal owners responsibility not everyone in society. Does society raise everyone's children or do the parents? These poor animals are just scavenging for food that their owners are not providing for them, and most likely the animal has not been vaccinated, nor even bathed properly.

I remember this one time this animal organization was up in arms about a land owner who after many occasions of these kittens getting into their yard and tearing up their garden, literally chased the kittens with a broom to try and get them off his property. They wanted to sue the land owner and I thought and said to the animal organization "well what about the kitty owner, where was he in all this?" It was the kitty owner's responsibility to keep his kittens out of the neighbors yard wasn't it? If someones' child breaks a neighbors window, whose responsibility is replacing the window? They of course, did not want to hear that and the one girl cursed at me like I was an animal hater or something. Quite to the contrary of course, my daughter has a cute puppy, that has a vet and gets taken care of properly, it's house trained and half the time she lived here was afraid to take it for a walk in the neighborhood for fear one of the wild dogs would tear it up before she could pick it up to protect it. If someone does not have the time to take care of an animal properly, they shouldn't have the animal period. Society today loves making everyone else responsible for their responsibilities and some organizations really get carried away with protecting the wrong parties.
joy

I remember reading somewhere that to frustrate cutworms, stick two toothpicks on opposite sides of the tomato plant stem. I've tried this several times, and haven't been bothered by cutworms, but haven't run any controls to see if it is really effective.

Another possibility is to use collars made of old yogurt or orange juice containers or toilet paper cores slit up one side and embedded in the ground around the stems.

My neighbor's cat is well behaved, but I have colonies of chipmunks who dig holes all over the garden. Either they dig under the fence or climb over.

Joy - I agree with everything you have posted.

Would animal control loan you a cage?

When I lived in South Florida, animal control would not expect me to cage the animal first - so their rules must have changed. I once had a pit bull in my yard which they picked up. Surely, your animal control would not expect you to try and cage such a dog?

Perhaps you could entice the cat into your portch, put a box over it, and then have it picked up. That's what I did when a neighbor's pesky cat kept digging up my vegetables in Florida. Be sure to remove a collar if it has one - I was told they would not pick up someone's "pet".

I know what you mean about taking dogs to the vet. My little dog visits the vet twice a year just to make sure she stays healthy, and she gets hearworm medicine each month as a preventative. As for me, I've seen a doctor once in the past three years!

I, too, had the problem of some critter snipping off my tomato stalks last summer and leaving them lying on their sides. After the 5th one I got the bright idea to try to re-root it and subsequent ones. Two or three took and I actually got tomatoes from the one larger one in time.
The other thing I did to protect the rest of the plants was find sticks or buy some wooden shish kabob sticks. I put 3 to 4 around each stem and attached a piece of cloth (Remay type) with clothes pins. That solved the problem.

Gardadore:

Do you have pics of what you did with your tomatoes? I have mine trellised, but would really like to have some further protection for my tomatoes.

I don't have photos but the tomatoes were in straw bales against a stone wall. I put 6 ft fencing against the the wall to keep the deer out but it works great for attaching the tomato stalks as they grow. I also have cages around the tomatoes. Between about every two bales I have tried to add fencing so they don't run into each other. I can take a photo of the set-up now before they get planted. When I put the sticks and the fabric around the tomatoes, they were between 10-12 inches. Once the tomatoes got to be almost two feet I removed them.

The cat has not been seen, so maybe it has wisened up and decided to venture somewhere's else or someone else has gotten tired of it and took care of the problem themselves. I did get a good deal at Lowes on a tripod light fixture that is 1,000 watts and goes in both directions as it has two lights, I will install it tomorrow night, as I need to spray my plants. I did buy tomato plants to replace the ones that croaked on me, and will empty out the buckets into totes and skim through the potting mixes really well, making sure there are no cut worms in the mix before potting up the new tomatoes. 7 out of 60 tomatoes ain't a bad number though, I don't think the rest are doing great. That toothpick idea just might work also as I've heard that one before and the canisters used as collars.

Some ideas I used didn't work this year, such as the organic weed preventor called corn glutamen, I have more weeds and grass in my flower bed than in my yard this year, back to preen next year for sure. The cold frame ordered from Walmart was an absolute failure, as it kept falling apart, the greenhouse racks that I bought at Big Lots was a much better idea. Will let everyone know how the new backyard light works. I intend to see just what lurks in my back yard at night while I and my maters sleep right? LOL
joy

My tomato plants are 3 feet tall and flowering. Stalks are about 1/2-1 inch in diameter. Am I in danger of cutworms? I know that I may have a blight issue, and have been pruning the bottom stalks where I see blighted leaves. I may have aphids - no clue how to get rid of them...

I plan to get some mulch to mulch under the tomatoes (suggestions welcome) in case it's blight, but think I will wrap base with toilet paper tube AND toothpicks for good measure; what do you think?

thanks.

Well, I but out a saucer of beer in hopes if it is slugs they will drown themselves in it, if not maybe the possum or cat will get drunk and die. I am finding aphids in my garden and have been smashing them all day and evening, tomorrow, I will spray with my own concoction. I am using in a 1 gallon sprayer bottle, mixed with 1 gallon of water, 1/3 cup of Dr Bronner's Peppermint soap, 1/3 cup of garlic powder and 1/2 cup of tasbasco, I will then spray both sides of leaves on all plants and stems and hopefully that and the stickys will take care of the aphids and ants. I had the ants all poisoned yesterday with something that works really well. Ants will let aphids hitchhike to plants, as the aphids suck the juice out of the plants and secrete a honeydew like substance that the ants love, so kill them ants. I got all my stakes around all my maters and cucumber trellis' out so now tomorrow I will finish wrapping my mason twine around the stakes, putting the garden staples over my polytubing to hold my irrigation hoses in place and I'll be happy. I'm guarding my 4 caspian pinks and 3 porterhouses though.
joy

SoFlaCommercial,

Last summer I used the toilet paper tubes to ward off the critter that was chomping off my tomato stems. Unfortunately they were not high enough so the critter chomped the stem above the tube! That's when I got taller sticks and wrapped remay cloth around and the problem stopped. Cutworms should not be an issue with a 3 ft. plant. The toilet tubes might work against cutworms if close enough to the stem but not against critters like chipmunks, squirrels, etc. Once I plant my tomatoes I will take a photo but that won't be until the end of May here.

yea, aphids attacking my garden as well. was going to get some ladybugs, but pappy (dad) says that ladybugs like tomatoes, too.

any idea where i can get bronner's peppermint soap? Never heard of it. will have to google it, I suppose. I've been using organocide and insecticidal soap, alternating every three days, but I forgot about 10 days' worth, and now I have weird green wormy caterpillars with yellowish stripes on my cucumbers, watermelon, squash, and zucchini. so have to start using again.

i saw someone put up a post somewhere that called for jalapenos. that one looked interesting as well.

You can buy Dr bronner's peppermint soap at Target; but, if you don't have a Target you can also buy it online, that's what I had to do. Ants don't like peppermint, and the fact they are the culprits at getting most aphids to your plants as they carry them to the plant, that is great, keep the ants away period. Now the tobasco and garlic will repel not only insects but varmints as well. I checked my dish of beer, nothing but beer in it, maybe the lime in the beer discouraged the slugs or I don't have any?
joy

Joy:

do the ingredients of your bug/varmint spray need to be diluted in water, or do I just put the whole thing undiluted into a spray bottle?

thanks.

You put 1 gallon of water, 1/3 c of Dr Bronner's peppermint soap, 1/3 c of tobasco, 1/3 c of garlic powder into a one gallon sprayer with a pump handle. Pump it up, and then spray the leaves top and bottom. Remember to do this in the evening so it has time to dry, or it will burn the plants. Try and miss the blooms also. One whiff of that combo and it sends the bugs and critters running.
joy