My first reaction was that its Jon lol, but seriously it looks typical of slug damage to me, at least thats what they do here the little buggers.

Denis

Sorry to be so stupid, but I generally don't have slug damage. Where are the slugs? Are they in the pots? Where do they live? Do they just come out at night? It's been really wet here so far this year, so slugs is not a far fetched idea.

bk

They hide anywhere it's moist/wet and are active at night, very early morning and I see a few at dusk. I have seen them hiding on the bottom of pots and actually inside drainage holes at bottom of pots and pried them out (ewww, with a stick or piece of bark, whatever is lying around) it's faster than running for ammonia spray if it's not handy! You keep most of yours pots elevated Bkay but if they are determined, they WILL get to the hosta. Some actually hide in the crown or a channeled petiole...lots of hidely holes for these slimy chewers?..ugh.... they are easily found moving around after a rain....

A note to myself...Time to get the bait out!

It's rained so much this year. We always stay wet in an El Nino year. The last time we had one, most of my irises rotted. Even my cemetery iris was diminished.

So, do you just do a blanket spray of 10 percent ammonia? What about the slug pellets? Do you have to replace them after every rain?

It's fairly early, but I didn't find anything on the Patriot. I'll go back out before I go to bed, if the rain goes south of us.

After several years of drought, we really need the rain. However, I'm really tired of the mud. I think, well, I'll mop the floor tomorrow. Then it rains tomorrow.

Both Dan and Cleo have those little tight feet that hold the mud ... until they get into the house. They love to go in and out when the weather is bad. Maybe I should quit drying them with a big towel when they come in. Think it might be a reward?

I'd never make it in Seattle. Good thing I live in Texas. We only get this about every 10 years or so.

bk

OMG, I love your doggie stories! Lol although traipsing in mud is not funny! Yeah, the towel rub down is probably heaven to them...all that TLC! Lol

This is the time I go around with the ammonia "drench" for the ones in the ground...which will be repeated twice more, weekly at least. The drench kills any eggs and its a "contact" sport for the slugs, lol... They slime their way to death! Once the leaves start unfurling I start using pellets.

Yes, the slug pellets have to be replaced after a rain...they disintegrate when wet. I hide them under groundcover where I know they hide, under pots, or pieces of wood specifically left out to place pellets under..also keeps them drier. I usually walked around after a rain to check the state of the pellets.

By the way, I used them sparingly but in all areas of the garden, not just near hostas. It also killed the pill bugs that I dislike so much. I found out they liked these pellets too! Bonus!

Last year I really made an effort but it was less work than I anticipated. I think I only broadcasted/hid pellets about 4 times throughout the season with very good results. I enjoyed posting my hole-less pics! Lol

The rain must be a blessing but What a relief that you only have to go through this every 10 or so and not every year! I hope your slug troubles are kept to a minimum, BKay! :-)

I am blessed. I have yet to see a slug in my garden. I just sprayed my first round of Deer Out though. :(

I am finding more slugs this year. The wet weather has been great for my plants, but it is such a battle to keep down the slugs, snails, and cutworms.

bk......I have the exact same issue this year. Have you seen any cutworms, or army worms, as we called them as kids?

I've had some damage in the middle of leaves but mostly around the edges, some severe, some minor. At first it was the new leaves, as Ken described, but now they are getting even some of the larger, more mature leaves. I was blaming pill bugs for the new, tender growth, as we have a massive amount of them this year. When the holes started showing up in the middle of the leaves then I started thinking some kind of slug.

I never thought about cutworms but I have seen a few of those destructive little bastards around this spring. I have not seen them in the 3 previous years since we moved back to SA. I would lay odds that they are the culprit. I put some Sluggo Plus inside some of the pots with damaged plants today. I know you guys still have rain in the forecast but ours is gone for now. I was waiting for the rain to go away for a few days before I used the Sluggo Plus since the rain will melt it. Sluggo Plus is supposed to control them also. We'll see.

Jo.....what pellets are you using?

Steve

I've been using Safer's Slug and Snail Killer last year and it seems effective. I hope the Sluggo appeals to your pill bugs!

I posted last year or in 2013 that I caught grasshoppers chewing leaves off of hostas here. Wouldn't have believed if I didn't see it myself.

Santa is mentioning pill bugs. They are really thick this year. That may be the problem. I have not seen any slime trails and have looked for them. I had a horrible problem in 2011, in my front bed, and never figured out exactly what it was. The only thing I ever found was the pill bugs (aka rollie pollies, doodle bugs, sow bugs, wood lice or, more correctly, Armadillidiidae). Those things are really hard to kill. They are not insects, but crustaceans. They say they don't eat live plants, but I'm not so sure and Santa seems convinced.

bk

I wrote this last night, but forgot to post. Yes, I've seen army worms. I didn't find any in the pots, though and didn't find any on the leaves when I went out with a flash light. But like Ken says, they are don't stay in the caterpillar stage very long. Those particular ones may be long gone.

These are photos from 2011 after I attempted to plant hosta in a brick planter in 2010. If I remember correctly, three out of five died. This is what happened to the other two. I ended up removing them from the planter and potting them up. One developed nematodes and I gave the other one away. The Dipel dust didn't help.

I took this picture this morning before there was much daylight so it's blurry. This is the damage to Afterglow, much of it done last night. I had Sluggo Plus sprinkled in the pot but that doesn't seem to have helped. I moved it to a different location, so hopefully the culprit isn't living in the pot. Luna Moth, which was close by, suffered a bigger beating overnight than this did. Looks like all of the others were spared for now. Hopefully not too many of my neighbors heard the obscenities flying from my back yard.

Jo....the Safer's Slug and Snail Killer is also killing pull bugs? I looked at the product and it doesn't mention that it controls them.

I have used egg shells for years, I just crumple them up and sprinkle around my hosta's, the snails dont like to crawl over the hard shells. Ask anyone you know to save their shells for you, even a diner or restaurant would probably give you them.

The thing about cut worms is they usually do their damage down in the petioles and work their way up. Yours are like mine, the damage is on the edge of the leaf or on the middle

Do you think diatomaceous earth would work? It's supposed to work on hard shelled insects.

I'll call the extension service today and see if they have any ideas.

bk

Agree with Ken above, definitely not slug damage (IMHO). Slugs cause lots of little holes that over time get bigger. But first you see little holes, not one big hole. If you had slugs, you'd see other tiny little holes.

I don't know what is causing the big hole for sure, but I do have some hostas with big holes like yours above. When I go out in the dark to examine the hostas to see what is eating them, on occasion I find a large caterpiller that I think is causing the damage. Problem is that I have to go out at the right time to find the caterpillar. I'm usually out every night trying to kill slugs, but on occasion, I find a caterpillar eating the large holes.

bk......I was thinking that the pill bugs were guilty of the damage to the young, tender growth but I don't think they are climbing up to the full grown leaves. That would take an army of pill bugs to do some of the damage I have seen over some nights. Like you, I have never seen any slime trails or even seen a slug. As of right now I'm leaning toward some kind of worm, cutworm or other, but that's just an uneducated educated guess.

That said, I have one hosta in the ground, a Drinking Gourd. That's some thick leaves and not usually a target for most plant eaters in my experience. BUT......mine has significant damage that is very similar to the other plants being eaten on, and I can guarantee you that the pill bugs have full access to that as it is barely off the ground, and some leaves even touch the ground. So you can wrap all of this up in a big ball of uncertainty.

I am anxious to hear what you find out from your agent.

Hey, mountainy man, that wasn't nice. I agree with Ken, cut worms.

Cut worms live in that top 1" of soil. Carefully loosen that top bit of soil scratching around and see if you can find them. We have large snails that will do that kind of destruction too. So will earwigs. Ah, Nature. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

-Babka

Darn chewers, every one of them can take a hike! Santa, true - I read the side panel and it's only for slugs n snails but their is no accounting for taste for which I'm glad. I hate chemicals so if one product can be effective for other pests, good! Yup, they ate and croaked. Maybe it's good for earwigs too, who knows. Warning about use around pets though.

Bkay,

It's cutworms. You should know that. Sluggo Plus with Spinosad should take care of this. Stop with the Dipel. That's Bt. It won't kill cutworms because they are too far along in their development. If you don't want to use Sluggo Plus then just spray the leaves and soil with a little Spinosad. Make sure you don't spray any flowers.

Steve

I talked to the Master Gardener at the Extension service. She found 2 interesting and probable causes after I explained our guesses and what we had eliminated so far.

One is the earwig, which we discussed already, but there is a test for it. Then there's another, a root weevil. Both are night feeders. Both can be controlled with a general insecticide. (Which I will use if it ever stops raining.)
bk

The following is copied from the email from the Master Gardener at the Extension Service:

These are the links to earwigs on the Texas A&M website:

https://insects.tamu.edu/extension/publications/epubs/e-213.cfm

https://insects.tamu.edu/youth/4h/Common/html_species/pinned/taxalist3/Dermaptera/Earwigs.html

http://hortipm.tamu.edu/pestprofiles/CHEWING/EARWIG/EARWIG.HTML

Also found this link for another pest:

Another insect pest that chews
hosta leaves is the adult black vine weevil. Signs of this insect are
irregular notches along the outer edges of leaves. Their larvae also
pose a problem by feeding on the crown and roots of hosta plants,
resulting in yellow,
wilted foliage. - See more at: http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/foliage/hosta/hosta-problems.htm#sthash.h18y43Ii.dpuf

Dallas County Master Gardener Help Desk

Good information, Bkay! I checked out all links provided and when reading up about the darn weevil, I found the beneficial insects section that mentioned the pill bugs.

Steve, the pill bugs were listed under other beneficial bugs and allegedly didn't pose a threat in the garden unless overpopulation occurred. HA! We found out different! A suggestion was given to grow marigolds which would take care of the problem. I didn't know that. I think I prefer marigolds to chemicals. FYI

I don't know how well marigolds will keep them away. One year, I planted a bunch of marigolds in the garden and the next morning most of plants were stripped bare of all their leaves. I had a big infestation of pill bugs that year and I believe they did they damage.

Thanks for the links, bk.

Jo....a pill bug is listed as beneficial? Whoever wrote that should be slapped silly. The pill bugs here are always a problem and are especially massive this year. I planted about 30 zinnias about three weeks ago and they have almost been stripped clean of their leaves by pill bugs. They are for sure the guilty party in that case. I see the little SOBs all over them.

Thought you'd get a laugh at that! When I tried a border of marigolds in the front yard years ago all the leaves were chewed off. At that time I didn't know what was eating them..maybe it was these sobs!

Spinosad works on chewing/sucking insects. They put it in dog flea collars. I is OK to use for organic gardening. The brand I use is Captain Jack's Bug Brew. I also use Sluggo Plus, (which by the way has Spinosad in it). Been using it for several years, and for the last couple years I have only had to use it a few times. It was discovered in an old rum distillery... must be good!

-Babka

It's not an insect. It's an arachnid, like an armadillo. (I could be using the wrong term, but they are related to armadillo.) Insecticides don't kill them. That's why I was asking about diatomaceous earth. It's supposed to break the shells of hard bodied insects such as fleas and ticks and cause them to desiccate. The DE is supposed to be microscopically sharp. I just wondered if the shell breaking might translate to the pill bugs?

bk

I can't plant marigolds in my garden anymore because the leaves get chewed down to the veins. I am pretty sure the culprit in my garden was the snail. I would actually find them on the leaves in the evening. I have applied the 10% ammonia solution once but I guess I will need to do it a few more times as others seem to do this.

Doesn't have to be an insect. It just has to chow down on the leaves. Weevils leave notches in the edges, I had a lot of then come up thru the deck boards. Haven't seen them in two years of using Sluggo Plus under the pots and on the deck. When I see aphids and thrips I grab the bottle of Cap't Jack's. I want PERFECT leaves!!!!!

-Babka

I found a bunch of earwigs under a couple of my pots.

Kill!

I rolled up the wet newspaper into little cigars and found nothing. Maybe Steve is right about mine, as I've found nothing and the damage seems to have stopped. Maybe it was cut worms. I haven't seen any of them in the last week or so.

Yuck, one was on me about a week ago. (I have no idea where it came from.) I was driving and I felt it crawling on my arm. I slung it out the window and it held onto the side view mirror all the way home, which was about 5 miles, though not on freeways. It was an army worm like all that I've seen.

bk

Yuck, BK! Tenacious little bugger, wasn't it? I'm so glad you are not finding more leaf damage on your beautiful hostas.

Rain and prolonged moisture brings out all sorts of evil in the garden. I moved a few pots today to look under them for slugs. Found a little dark brown baby one, stepped on it. Loving all the worms though. They do GOOD work!

Lovely day today, another tomorrow. Enjoy the sunshine, folks!

Maybe that worm crawling on you was a sign. Woooooo!!!!!