Hi, Sborror. You'll probably get a better and faster response to your question over in the Organic Gardening forum. This forum is mostly inhabited, when it's inhabited at all, by growers of cut flowers for market. I don't know anything about Florida bugs, except that I hear you have a lot, but I see the same thing in my flowers, and I think a lot of bugs feed at night and hide in the day. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful. ThinMan

Crickets(brown house crickets) used to zero in on my sprouts and do what it sounds like is happening to your plants. When plants get big they chew the outside layer of the stems and trunks of bigger plants. Plants will look like a beaver chewed on a tree. The tops of the sprouts would be on the soil next to a chewed off stem/trunk. I work nights so the only way I figured out it was crickets was going outside and catching them in the act. They liked sprouts better than the small plants. But they did like chewing the bottom bark off bigger plants later on. They might have gone after the bark because it was summer and there were no more tender sprouts to eat. I saw a few grasshoppers doing the same thing during the day-chewing the bark off plants. They like the stems of pods too. I'd find half ripe peppers laying on the ground untouched except the stems would be chewed. I caught crickets chewing on the pods stems one night and grasshoppers during the day. I bought some nematodes and put them in my potting soil. It seems to have taken care of anything that lays eggs in my potting soil(not earthworms,they only attack certain grubs/larva). Crickets like to crawl into the drain holes in my bigger pots during the day and I think that is how the nematodes can attack them.

duplicate post See http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/3187340/something-eating-my-seeds-in-the-greenhouse?n=2

Hey all, So I think I have mice (again) in my greenhouse. I've started much of my fall crop in flats and when I came in this morning I saw that something had rooted around in the trays and dug up/ate seeds. I was surprised because I had covered each flat with a daisy tray before closing up the greenhouse the evening before, to prevent just this kind of activity. I guess I'm dealing with tiny mice? Unless there's something else that could be the culprit. Any thoughts? One last question... if the daisy trays aren't providing sufficient protection, do you recommend I cover with fully solid bottom trays? Here are pics of the damage... basically what I was using to try and protect seeds, although the holes on the sides of mine are a bit smaller.