Thanks so much for all the info. Gayle these are climbers and not on the ground. I do know that method for garden veggies but it would be imposible to collar over 200 hostas and some of them are over a foot wide at their base! So for veggies and the smalls that could work. No these are up in the stems chewing the leaves. Not pretty when you dig deeper and see new growth chewed as well. Well soon I hope for the moths but like Westy and Chris,I think I might have to spray a few areas that are infested. But come next spring I will get this under control the little #@%$#&%$! lol Thanks all.

Sammy, Thanks. The number of hoppers has creeped me out this year. When I walk through the grass on the side of the barn, all I hear is "plink, plink, plunk" as grasshoppers rise from the grass in unison to avoid being stepped on and hit the side of the metal barn. Usually they peak in July and then their numbers start dropping, but this summer, since we were very dry all spring and didn't have good rainfall until June and July, we went into summer with a huge population, and then every time it rained, we got a new hatch of hoppers a few days later so it still seems like we have more every week than we had the week before. There's been a lot of cicadas at night---the whole loud "buzz" of all these living things at night is so loud that you can't even sleep with a window open on a cool night because they'll keep you awake. I saw a dead cicada lying in the driveway yesterday, so maybe their population is beginning to decline. There are some veggies in the garden that the hoppers ate all the way down to the ground, and I sprayed one time this summer with a chemical pesticide, or I think the hoppers would have devoured the entire garden. That's the first time I've ever sprayed my entire garden with a chemical pesticide. It killed the grasshoppers, but killed lots of beneficial insects too, so I doubt I'll ever do it again. I hated everything about it and think that in future years when the hoppers are extremely bad, I'll let them devour the garden and I'll just take up needlepoint or something for the rest of the growing season. We are at the point now where we desperately need for the blister beetles to show up in the next few weeks and devour tons of grasshopper eggs or we'll be in trouble in 2015. This is the first time I've begun actively rooting for the blister beetles to please show up here. Dawn

Unless you put the Carbaryl (Sevin) directly into the ear of the corn you could spray all the corn all day long and have no affect on that coern earworm whatsoever since the wee bugger is inside the ear well protected from any poison you could apply from the outside. Organic gardeners would use an oil, squirted inside the ear near the silk, to smother that corn earworm, but since organic gardeners know that Carbaryl (Sevin) is useless this is not something they would use.

Glad I read the posts on this thread! Worms have been an issue for me also lately, different ones I'm not sure which is which. The large green guys (cabbage worms?), webworms, and a black cp with a stripe down it's back that I have no idea what is....lots of those on calendula seedlings this late spring, a few now. I've also found green inchworms on my new roman chamomile, well underneath. I would've never seen them if I hadn't gone after the slug on the plants. Being an "organic" gardener, this means I hand pick and squish these guys usually....but it's so bad I was wondering about bt. Now that I see it's only effective if they are young...what do I do? Time to spend handpicking is limited now, and the green guys are hard to spot....even with all the poop. Any suggestions? I never see the eggs....only the worms. Can bt be used as a preventative measure?