It's also my first year growing Sungold's this year and from what I can tell so far is that cutworms love them. Make sure you put a good collar around the base of the plants to keep them away.

I use water bottles to make collars. I cut the top and bottoms off and place it over the plant before putting them into the ground. When planting, make sure that the base of the collar goes about one inch into the ground. and about 2-3 inches above.

Also, I'd place them over the plants now so you won't have to force too much foliage through the small collar. Your other option is to cut the bottles vertically was well so you can slip them around the base of the plant from the side. This way, you won't have to work the top of the plant through the collar. If you do it this way, I would use two collars with the openings facing opposite directions so that there is no opening (You want a circle, not a C). I had a worm work his way through the opening on one of single collars cut this way. Since I started using two per plant, I have not had any problems.

Sungold = little golden globes of sweetness! I have grown them the last 2 years. They grow like weeds. My plants last year easily topped 8ft.

Never seen a cutworm and hope I never do.

Sungold F1 plants don't have any special requirements for growth beyond what you'd use for any other tomato.

I can't really tell how big your seedlings are now, but at the 1-2 true leaf stage it's best to take them out of the seed starting mix and transfer them to a small pot/other container or many of us transfer our seedlings to individual plastic cells that are part of an insert that goes into a standard nursery size tray.

If you have just a few seedlings it might be best to just transfer them to a Dixie cup, 8-12 oz, with holes punched in the bottom for drainage and let them grow in those, individually until putting them outside in your new raised bed which I assume you're going to fill with some good growing material for tomatoes and other things you might be growing.

When you transfer the seedlings from the starting mix be sure you plant them deeply in the Dixie cup, or whatever, so that the stems are buried and there's just a tuft of foliage left at the top.

If I've missed something please just ask me again here in this thread.

About cutworms. To date, and that's about 2500 different varieties grown, I haven't found any one variety that's especially susceptible to cutworms. Lanky, spindly plants are always preferred by them but if the stems are strong they can't gnaw them down b'c a cutworm has to encircle the stem before gnawing and it can't do it if the stem is nice and thick and strong.

So to prevent cutowrm damage it's best to make a physical barrier and that means placing a twig and plastic soda straw or some use nails, right next to the stem to prevent the worm from being able to encircle the stem.

Using collars of any kind doen't prevent the worms from coming up from the soil inside the collar in my experience.

Carolyn, who is just a bit concerned about getting those seedlings to the 6-9 inch size to transplant outside rather late, I would think for your area. Most others I know already have their plants outside in your gardening zone area. But if others in your area are at the same stage you are, well, just go with the flow. ( smile)

Yes, there is the possibility that I planted them a bit small (or deep), causing the cutworm problems. But for the most part, only the cherries were attacked. Placing nails or toothpicks near the base of the plants didn't work for me. I've lost at least six cherry tomato plants to cutworms and about five squash plants. Not all at the same time either. I'd plant one, lose it. Germinate another. Plant it, lose it. Repeat. It wasn't until I started placing collars around the base that the plants started to survive.

Rather than using drinking straws, would wrapping aluminum foil around the base of the stem have the same effect? It certainly seems much easier to employ.

As for your sungolds (and an attempt to get this back on topic), I understand that they are really no different than other cherry tomato plants. Although I do have another thread started asking if it necessary to prune cherries where you may want to prune non-cherry types.

ArcherB, who feels kinda guilty for helping turn this into a cutworm thread.

Are Sun Gold tomatoes slower growing than other kinds? I planted a total of 23 tomato plants consisting of a few each of 7 different varieties, and the Sun Golds are growing slower and are smaller than any of the others. Is this normal or did I get a bad batch of seeds? I raised all the seedlings using the same technique and starting mix.

Californian, I've seen no difference at all in terms of Sungold F1 seedlings growing slower, but slower growth doesn't necessarily mean bad seeds b'c they did germinate and that means that all the DNA is OK. Perhaps the seeds were a bit older and it's just taking them longer to get going.

What was the source of your Sungold seeds and do you know their age?

Archer, I don't think foil will do it b'c it's the physical barrier to stop the worms from being able to encircle the stems that's most important. I can't understand why straws and twigs and nails don't work for you.

But, there are several different kinds of cutworms and I'm wondering if you have the kind that can crawl up the stem.

Where do your cutworms gnaw off the stem and how much of the stem do they leave, and do you see any foliage missing at the same time?

Carolyn

Carolyn:

The symptoms I'm seeing is a gnawed stem, usually not all the way through, but enough so that the plant falls over and the pill bugs finish it off. I have saved a couple by placing "little stakes" on them to support the top half until the stem heals itself. It looks as if an inch tall lumberjack tried to cut down the plant with a little axe. All of the damage I've seen is withing two inches of the soil. I have seen some leaf damage, but I don't know if that's from cutworms or something else. Either way, the leaf damage is minor enough to not really harm the plants much.

I haven't tried the straws, as in cutting them and wrapping them around the stem. I haven't had to as the collars seem to work. I have tried toothpicks and whatever piece of mulch is laying around, but I have had plants fall victim with these precautions in place.

As for the foil, I would think that cutworms could wrap around it all day and gnaw at their heart's content. I don't see how they could gnaw through the foil.

My damage looks like this, specifically that bottom partial stem near the base of the plant where it's not eaten all the way through. If that were all the damage a plant received, I could usually save it:
{{gwi:1312469}}

When I get time, I'll see if I can take my own pictures of my own plants, but that won't be until next week sometime.

I have heard Sungold holds the world record for longest vine - 65 feet. I haven't grown it but if you do, be prepared. My heirlooms last year got bigger than I expected (around 10 feet) so I can't imagine what a Sungold would do in my garden.

I planted my sungolds late last year and they still got ridiculously tall (just look at my pic). They will grow like a weed once they get going!

Thanks so much to all of you! I will be wary of cutworms and I'm very excited to see how tall the vine grows!

To Carolyn, my tomato plants are the one to two leafers, and I want to move them out of the current soil; I'm just not sure if I can move all three of them temporarily into one pot, or if they all need separate pots.

Hi milaj,

Welcome to tomato growing!

Go for seperate pots if you plan on seperating them later. That way you won't have to traumatize them by tearing or cutting the root systems apart. They will pretty quickly fill just about any space you have in a tempory pot or cup.

Bets