Rid your garden of bugs and slugs with these non-pesticide methods

Cutworms only take a few bites out of new transplants, which doesn’t seem like it would do much harm, except that those bites are at ground level. Attacked seedlings topple over, dead. Don’t confuse this damage with damping-off disease, which is caused by a fungus that also attacks at the soil line, but usually affects only very young, newly sprouted seedlings.

Cutworms can be repulsed by some sort of barrier, such as a cardboard collar around each plant. Toilet paper tubes cut a couple of inches long are convenient for this purpose. Surround each transplant and press the collar a bit into the soil

Another approach is to fool the cutworm, who, before taking a bite of a plant, wraps its body around the stem to make sure it is tender enough. Once the stems of vegetable and flower transplants toughen, cutworms leave them alone. I fool cutworms by sticking a toothpick in the ground right up against each of my transplants. The insects think they are embracing small, woody-stemmed trees, and leave the young plants alone.

Another method to foil cutworms (which I have not tried) is to trap them in foot-deep holes, made with a broom handle or inch-thick dowel. As daylight approaches, the cutworms climb into these holes for shelter. What they don’t realize is they are incapable of ever climbing back out.

Fortunately for us gardeners, the life of a cutworm is not easy, with threats from birds, ground beetles and certain small, parasitic wasps.

Cutworms often are few enough in number that if you scratch around in the ground near a damaged plant, you can find and kill the cutworm. Do this regularly and at some point even the toothpicks or collars will be unnecessary.