Pests!

This year I'm dealing with a couple garden pests for the first time.

First we have Mr. Bunny.

 He's super adorable, but he's eating all my  plants!

I started some cabbages from seed and plunked them in the garden in late April. The next morning, gone! He's also been nibbling my lettuce. I could deal with that, but now he's taken it too far. He's eating my peas. Snow peas are a favorite veggie in this house. Dude, do NOT mess with my peas.

Nibbled Peas

Here's a shot of the pea bed. Notice how the plants on the right are much bigger and happier looking, and the plants on the left are smaller and sparser, especially in front? That's rabbit damage, people! He's been going to town.

According to my neighbor, the bunny lives in the bush next to my pea and garlic bed (he's eaten a few of my garlic stalks too). Googled tonight to figure out what to do. Scarecrow? Big plastic wolf-like fake dog to scare him away? As it turns out rabbits are very sensitive to smell. Someone on a message board  recommended circling your garden with Bounce dryer sheets.  So tonight I ran out and did just that. I don't have a picture yet because it's dark out (and it looks kind of silly!). Hope it works. Rabbit be gone. :/

The other new pests I'm dealing with are cutworms.

They eat the stalks of tender seedlings in your garden - basically mow down your baby plants by cutting right through the stem. They're moth larvae/caterpillars that burrow under the soil by day, and come out and eat your plants by night.

Lovely Critters

The first thing they ate were my ground cherry seedlings. My GC seedlings this year are a lot smaller than my GC seedlings were last year. I got a late start on them so they're a few weeks to a month behind. Which means they're tender and tiny and the perfect size to be eaten by cutworms.

When a cutworm's been there, the seedlings are reduced to a pile of leaves.

Before Cutworm

After Cutworm

After I found the leaf pile I rooted around in the soil by the plant remains and found him.

Isn't he cute?

I smooshed him right after taking that picture. No mercy.

The best defense against cutworms is making cardboard collars for your plants. For some reason if a cutworm is moving across your garden bed and encounters a cardboard wall, he won't attempt to go under or over it. He'll  just move on.

Sooo, I outfitted that area of my garden with lots and lots of collars!

Toilet Paper rolls cut into shorter segments work great. So do cereal boxes cut into strips and taped into collars. Looks like the one above is starting to come apart. I need to get out there and remedy that! Although from what I've seen so far I *think* they prefer plants that are smaller than this.

I didn't think of collaring my leafy greens, and cutworm ate one of my kale seedlings yesterday. Same thing. Pile o' leaves, and I found him just under the surface of the soil, circling what was left of the plant stem.  Lettuce and kale were directly sewn in the garden and were a lot less work, so I'm not going to bother doing the collar thing with them. I smushed that guy too, so I think they're safe for now.

Dang pests.