Shot, there are number of registered pesticides tageting, corn rootworms, corn borers and the like that are applied pre-emergence. Everything that I know about for corn earworm, has to topically applied shortly after silking. I checked the American Vegetable Grower pest and disease control guide but could not find anything. He may have been thinking of root worms or borers. Lots of products for those.

How long ago did you plant it and how tall is it now? does it have tassles at the top of the plant? If so, how long ago did the tassles form? If within the last week or so, grab & shake the plant to see if the tassles are shedding pollen. Look anywhere from 18-36" up from the ground for silks, they branch out off the main stalk above a leaf. You need to get pollen from the tassles to fall on the silks. If you have no tassles, then it's not old enough yet. Tassles usually come a week or 2 before silks. If you have tassles but no pollen shakes out, it's past its time. You probably have a few plants bunched together--they probably planted 2 or 3 seeds and maybe they all sprouted. Nothing you can do about it now. It's not too common to find corn at nurseries. The only time I've seen them, they were in 6-packs, with 2 seeds in each cell. Don't worry about the gnats. You can usually tell the difference between gnats & aphids--gnats, even dead ones, you'll see clear wings that may shine in the sunlight. If you don't have tassles yet, there's still hope, though if you can successfully pollinate the silks, you will probably only have 1 ear (per plant, so you may get 1-3 ears total.) Each silk represents 1 kernel on an ear, so get as much pollen onto the silks to get a full ear of kernels. It only takes 1 grain of pollen needed per strand of silk to form 1 kernel. Sometimes I even grab a leaf that has lots of shed pollen on it and bend it to where the silks are and wipe the silks with the pollen on the leaf. Hope this helps. Mark

There's no single thing that is guaranteed to work, so I employ a vast array of techniques. I plant several varieties every year, and at least one of them usually is either Texas Honey June or Country Gentleman because they have very tight corn husks that help exclude the earworms. I always plant my early corn as early as possible--usually around the third week in March here, or whenever the soil temperatures hit the right range. If you use a short-season corn (I use Early Sunglow) for your early corn, it often will mature before the corn earworms even show up. If I plant Early Sunglow in the last week of March, it usually is ready for harvest by Memorial Day weekend and the corn earworms aren't even here by then most years. Prior to planting, if you grow corn in the same place every year, if you'll plow or rototill your garden plot in the winter when it still is cold, you will kill some of the ones overwintering in the ground, or expose them to birds who then will eat them. I usually use my little Mantis to cultivate the soil in the corn patch twice in the winter, about 3 to 4 weeks apart. Some people treat their soil with beneficial nematodes which attack the overwintering one. I am not thoroughly convinced it works, but some folks swear by it. When I did it, I couldn't tell that it made a difference. I like to plant companion plants with tiny flowers (chamomile, yarrow, dill, etc.) to attract beneficial insects that attack corn earworms, like trichogramma wasps and green lacewings. You also can buy and release the predatory wasps or even minute pirate bugs. Normally, you release some predatory wasps weekly during the time the corn is tasseling and silking and the ears are enlarging. Some years I spray the ears with Bt 'kurstaki', which will kill not only the corn earworms, but also the army worms and European corn borers. If your planting is not too huge, you can apply mineral oil or soybean oil to the corn silks when they have just begun to turn brown on the tips. They used to recommend beginning this as soon as the silks appear, but then decided that using the oil that early interferes somewhat in fertilization of the silks, so now recommend you wait and start applying the oil as soon as fertilization is complete and the silks begin to brown and dry. The oil will smother the newly hatched corn earworms as they begin to travel down the silks to eat your corn kernels. You can increase its effectiveness by adding Bt 'kurstaki' to the oil you're using. It doesn't take too long to do this with a small home-garden sized patch of corn. You can use an eyedropper, a squirt bottle or something similar that allows you to put just a few drops on each set of silks. I cannot imagine doing it with an acre or two of corn though. With both the Bt and the oil you need to reapply every three days until you harvest. Some people mix hydrogen peroxide with the oil (mineral oil or soybean oil) in a 50-50 mix and spray the silks with that, but I haven't tried it so cannot say whether or not it works. Using all the above, you can probably get 80-90% of your ears worm-free most years. It is harder in a year when the air temps warm up really early (like last year) and the pests arrive really early. Some years I haven't done anything at all with Texas Honey June and have found little to no hornworms in the ears, but that's not true of the newer supersweet types. I have had some success spraying the whole corn patch every few days with Garlic Barrier which just seems to repel the pests and keep them away from the plants. Spraying with spinosad is aid to help, but I won't do it because it is a broad-spectrum pesticide, and I don't want to use anything that is broad-spectrum because of its potential to harm the beneficial insects I rely upon to help control the pest insects. Some people spray with pyrethrums, but because we have pet cats and pyrethrum can cause nerve damage in cats, I don't use it. My old farmer friend, Fred, sprays his plants with Sevin, though he doesn't always seem to be happy with the results. When all else fails and the worms get into the ears, I just remove them and cut away the damaged part of the ear after harvest. Hope this helps. Dawn

Hi Steve, I did find this site through your post on the Cedar Hills forum (you may know me as grbpwr on that site). I did try the Scotts last year in Spring and Fall but it didn't seem to help. I also sprayed weed killer on all the weeds every week without any noticeable difference. I changed all my cleaning supplies to organic over the past year and love it, it is so much more effective than chemical cleaners (baking soda, vinegar and Dr. Bonner's are my life) so I thought I would do the same for my yard, especially since chemicals didn't seem to get the job done last year. I have TONS of weeds. The yard on one side of my driveway (luckily this is the smaller area of front yard) is nothing but weeds and bare spots and my backyard isn't much better. I was actually planning to get one of those claw things for my dandelion problem because digging them up by hand like I tried last year was a flop due to the super long roots. I will try that on my existing crabgrass. Skoob, I hadn't heard about using plastic to kill existing crabgrass, but I had heard that a VERY light dusting of baking soda on existing crabgrass would kill it in about 5 hours without damaging the soil or grass around it. However, this has only been tested in warmer climates (FL, TX, etc.) so I was hesitant to use it, I think I will try both methods and see which is more effective. At this point nothing short of setting the grass on fire and starting over will make most of my lawn look any worse (although I do have a really nice section directly in the front which I want to encourage to spread).