What does the damage look like? Could it be cutworms?

tj

They like them all in my yard. Even in pots 2' up from the deck. They go after 1/8" thick jade leaves, leaving little dents. I've been using Sluggo Plus every few weeks to control them. Snails can climb up to the eaves around here, and they do! Earwigs can do a lot of damage too.

Do you have some photos so people here can have a peek to see what sort of damage you are getting?

A rolled up wet newspaper left out over night will attract the earwigs and you can shake them out in the morning. Worth a try to see if they are the culprits.

Time for some sleuthing.

-Babka

Honestly, none. They will get them all, given the chance. Yeah, the thicker leaved varieties will look better longer, but it's only a matter of time before they get hungry enough to make a mess of them too. Sometimes they just chew on the petioles of those and collapse the leaves..lovely.

The ammonia drench in the spring is only part of the battle...it's a never ending war.

FWIW, the ones that fare the best in my garden against slugs are the Tokudama and June families.

Here is a picture of the damage to Empress Wu...Poor baby!

Linda

Cutworm...some kind of caterpillar, IMO.Poke around and see if you can find them nearby. Look under the leaves, too. What a joy they are. :(

coll, how can you tell that is cutworm rather than slugs/snails?

How do you get rid of cutworms?

Cutworms and caterpillars do more damage...bigger holes, and often starting from the edges like you can see in that pic. Also the tissue between the veins is neatly eaten in a line Slugs make more irregular, spotty holes. Sometimes they don't eat all the way through the leaf ( on a thicker leaf), but cutworms do...they just cut, cut, cut. They can do so much damage in just one night.

Sluggo plus is supposed to work cutworms (Spinosad is the ingredient that is supposed to work against them)..but that hasn't worked for me. If I start to see that kind of damage, I look for the worm. And it's a happy day if I find them.

Thanks! Very clear and helpful. What do you do when you find them? Is it a manual pick and squish operation?

Oh yeah,I squish them with the nearest rock....gleefully!!!!! I'll take slugs over cutworms any day. If I see anything resembling one around my hostas, it dies, instantly. Google cutworm hosta damage and you'll find some pics if you don't know what they look like. Their work is distinctive once you know what to look for. Last year one hit my Tokudama F and I turned over a nearby rock, and there he was.

If you have a platform bird feeder, the birds will make short work of them.

tj

Go out at night with a flash light. You'll see them. The ones I had were about an inch or an inch and a half long. I had regular cut worms and army worms, too. But they are both night feeders. The army worms were green and black. The cut worms were beige. They hide in the soil during the day. sometimes, you can fiddle around with the soil and find them.

Bacillus Thurengensis (sp?) works very well on them. It's considered organic. If I remember correctly, the liquid left a residue on my hosta, though. They have to eat it. You can get a powder or a liquid, if I remember correctly.

They devastated the hosta at the Dallas Arboretum last year. I had them pretty bad, too. Last year was a really bad year for them.

bk

edit: added photo of Dallas arboretum cutworm damage

This post was edited by bkay2000 on Thu, Jun 20, 13 at 18:07

Thanks everyone! Guess I will be going out tonight with a flashlight to see what I can find and tomorrow I will go look for that Bacillus Thurengensis stuff. And I thought snails were bad...

Most of my plants don't look like this but there are a few that have taken a beating this year.

Thanks
Linda

You will learn to recognize them quickly and get rid of them from now on. It's a learning process.

I've had none this year. However, I've had the fourlined plant bug this year. ;-)

Good luck.

bk

I haven't seen any cutworms this year either, knock on wood!!! Bkay, it looks like someone took a shotgun to that poor hosta.

Coll, another pest that makes holes in the leaf but does not complete removing the tissue thin top coating, is the larva of the saw fly. I had them last year, and it was same size holes as the slug, but not all the way through like you stated. Slug stuff does not get them.

One natural predator to hunt down the sawfly larva would be the assassin bugs which now are present in nymph form on my Moonlight Sonata hosta...specifically, on her blooming scape. I consider this a good omen.

Here is a picture of a sawfly sitting on a leaf of Alex Summers.
When I begin to see the sawflies, I begin spraying for the larva. Only, this year I have added crushed crabshell to my potting mix, and that is supposed to feed the bacteria which will dine on nematodes and maybe other stuff like insect eggs.

And here is a leaf with sawfly larva damage. See, the holes do not go through the top layer of the leaf.

I also use a Bayer spray, forget the name now. But I've used only 2 spray bottles this year as opposed to a dozen or so last year.

Yikes, as if regular flies weren't bad enough!

I was thinking today about cutworms and caterpillars. Some people actually want "Butterfly" gardens. Wouldn't planting such a garden encourage these pests- and they are real pests in their larval feeding stage....at least they are pests if you have foliage plants that you care about, like hostas.

I suppose insects are necessary in the grand scheme of things but I really hate bugs. I wish I could get over it.

I have ordered some Gulf fritillary butterfly larva or coccoons and waited for them to morph into butterflies. This particular butterfly lays eggs only on the passiflora vines, passion vines, and that is the food for the larva. No other plant is harmed, but they might strip the leaves off my passionvines. Heck, I planted them for this butterfly.

Then there are other host plants for other species of butterfly. I just renewed my milkweed plants. And I forget all the things which depend on the milkweed.

I'm glad I did not kill all the nymphs of the assassin bug which were crawling over my Moonlight Sonata flower scapes. I might need them to patrol the area to eat any stray cut worms or sawfly larva. Sounds good to me. I'm beginning to appreciate how Mother Nature can balance things out if we wait to see the pattern.

Well I went out with a flashlight and didn't find anything. Maybe they have morphed into moths by now.

I hate bugs too and spiders and snakes and mice etc. I know spiders are beneficial and as long as they stay out of the house I will leave them alone. I would leave other bugs alone too as long as they don't destroy my plants. I have had pill bugs and earwigs destroy newly planted annuals overnight before so now when I plant I put down some bug killer to stop them before they devour everything. I don't know if we have saw flys...haven't seen any damage like that.

I was just thinking that back when I was obsessed with daylilies, gardening was a lot easier. I don't think anything bothered them. I wasn't worried about diseases, nematodes, snails and slugs and now cutworms. I do love the Hosta though so I will wage the battle against the stupid bugs!

Linda :)

Linda, I have very little trouble with insects or diseases on my hosta. Last year was bad for cut worms, but they were only on three or four plants. The Arboretum doesn't spray anything or have anyone going out at night with flashlights. They're also right on the lake. The four lined bug ate some holes in my So Sweet #2 on probably 10 leaves, but it must have 200 leaves. Second flush covered most of the holes and I could cut off the damaged leaves if I wanted to. A couple of other plants had one or two leaves damaged by the four line plant bug, but that was it.

I think hosta a fairly carefree plants. We, on the forum get all wound up about our precious babies, as we want them to grow perfectly and be photo worthy. Most of us also watch them closely. However, most people just ignore them and they do just fine.

Try to relax and enjoy them (and I will, too).

bk

Yeah, it's funny whenever I talk to a gardener type person that isn't into hostas the way we are. They are always like, " oh hostas are so carefree....you can't kill a hosta, etc". Little do they know how much we obsess over their care.

Linda, I actually find quite a few snails on my day lilies. Of course the damage they do is not noticeable on the strappy leaves the way it is on those lovely big hosta leaves. Oddly, the snails stick to the DLs and the slugs have the hosta domain here.

Earwigs! Ack, I tried to grow basil in a pot in the one sunny spot of my yard- my deck. Earwigs all over it....no way could I eat it after seeing that.

BKay, there's a GREAT pic of 'So Sweet' at The Hosta Library, the last pic at the bottom. The plant is beautiful. Have you seen it? : )

Don B.

Wowie, BK, that is the perfect mature So Sweet to be a good example of its kind. Every leaf in place too. Congratulations. :)

Bkay and Don B....here is a pic of my So Sweet, crowded by my front door...I moved it because I wanted to prolong the gold margin. It does not show well in terms of its surroundings and does not get light from all angles, but all in all, what do you think? Would it be better to place it in a pot rather than chance it being stepped on its toes? I do like it at the front and it gets really good light there.

!! So exciting to see BK's photo make the library. Josephine, that pretty little SS looks like it could use more space.

I agree...am ashamed to have left it there so long. No doubt about it...sometimes I'm just downright lazy!

I would love to see bkay's SS pic...no one around here has a SS for me to share notes with...bkay - how old is yours and is there is a story with it?
Jo.

Haha, I understand being stubborn (and lazy) about an original planting site. I can how you a pic of ss later today when I get to my computer. You might want to start a thread with so sweet in the title, too. Not sure what other questions you had.

Good advice, thank you...waiting to see your SS.. I will Go and start thread! :)

Mocc, the gulf fritillaries have killed my passion flowers before. They particularly like the white one and will eat it down where it can't recover.

Thanks for all the kudos on the photo. I was surprised when it showed up. Bob responded by saying, why didn't I send photos of something he didn't have, so I thought he wouldn't post it.

bk