The Plague of Cutworms

It was most definitely the cutworms that ate my garden. 

Here are some rec's people gave me (remember I'm trying to be mostly organic here):

- place a nail next to the plant to prevent cutworm from curling around plant and eating it.
- Diphel Dust
- BT by Safer
- get a chicken (where the hell would I get one by the beach??)

This is what I did:

- tore up garden and picked out cutworms (found around 100 of the bastards--still having nightmares of cutworm larva)
- waiting a few days
- searching dirt again
- apply Diphel Dust or BT
- transplant seedlings and place deep nail next to each one
- hold my breath and hope that the cutworms don't come back

In hindsight, I saw a caterpillar a while ago and didn't know what it was.  I should have picked it out then. 

Invasion of the Unknown

So, I had some Japanese raddishes growing (by request of my husband) and lettuce growing.  Oh and some red bells.  The red bell pepper plant was (foreshadowing here...notice the word "was") beautiful.  It was healthy and strong and growing tons of nicely shaped, store quality red bells that hadn't turned color yet. 

Until the day of the invasion. 

I checked on the garden beds and noticed there was a suspiciously empty patch in one of the areas.  I looked a bit closer and yep--all my lettuce was gone.  Completely full on gone.  The Japanese raddishes were gone too.  Totally gone.  I immediately thought maybe snails, but they usually just nibble and stuff.  And I couldn't find any tracks or evidence of them.

I then started thinking maybe a bird.  After all, I did have some entire strawberries go missing.

I found a tiny slug nesting in my bell plant.  Again, I didn't think anything of it.  I simply picked it out (with gloves and a shovel) and got rid of it. 

After another frustrating day of things mysteriously disappearing, I decided to try one more thing.  I've already used crushed egg shells to no avail.  It could be a bird, it could be slugs.  I didn't know.  So in a last ditch attempt to keep things organic, I filled pie tins with cheap beer and put them in different locations.

The next morning, my husband excitedly called me outside before work. 

7 slugs.  7 little damn slugs terrorizing my garden. 

Oh yeah.  We mean business around here.