Hi "flowers"! Good to see you post and your post is so *timely* for me to pass along to my SIL!
She phoned me and emailed me very upset to find a wonderful fern she'd transplanted (from their woods,
to a 14" deep pot)totally uprooted by deep digging on either side of it! She cannot figure out what, *whoever*
it was, was after. I had suggested a raccoon, perhaps might have been after grubs.

I think you might have come up with the best *culprit*! That is, if fern also have cutworms. Not sure on that one!

Again, good to see this thread and you posting! My garden looks very happy, after some lovely replacements
of some of my lost ones in the Spring. I think you would enjoy knowing that, since you were so kind and
so sympathetic to my plight! :o) :o) :o)

janice

Wonderful story!

I love when people and animals can find a way to co-exist peacfully. What a great attitude you have about the skunk visiting your garden.

May your garden florish because of his help!

Janet

Interesting because even though I live in the middle of a semi-large metropolitan area my DH and I smelled skunk just the other day. Very rare occurance here. I doubt that the skunk will be back so I will have to make the cutworms now happily munching on my hostas history by myself. Sue

Pepe and I co-exist here. He cruises out of the woods every evening at dusk, looking for goodies. In the early morning I check if I have recently planted anything.

Pepe has very little black on him - his white stripe covers about 3/4 of his body. He has been here for years and also passes on his heavy white markings to his kids. One of his kids was roadkill when I went to town this a.m. They just didn't get the brains of Pepe.

Poor little Pepe Jr!

My mother has something that will occasionally dig holes next to her hosta and a few other plants. The only thing we worry about is the digging too close to the root system and damaging the plant that way.

Thanks for the story....you may have solved a mystery on our end as well!

Armadillos will also dig up plants or dig right at the roots. They normally do this to newly planted things, hostas included.
Darlene

I long since learned that while I may be in command on my yard in the daytime, I have a lot of visitors at night. Unless they are actively harmful (like woodchucks eating my veggies) I let them be. Most of them seem to like to eat my pests... :)

Ha! My oh-so-cute chipmunks tunnel among my hosta, and undermined my mini bed so badly that I wanted to wring their tiny necks with my own two hands. They're not eating the hosta, but they undermine the roots so badly the hosta can't get water or nutrients.

GRRR.

What does a cut worm look like? How long are they and do they look more like a non fuzzy caterpillar? I don't think I have ever seen one. There are some of my hostas and annuals with holes in the leaves and I gave earwigs credit for the damage. These are long irregular holes. I dislike worms of any kind so I can't go looking for them! My flesh is crawling as I type this. I'm getting better at being able to toss night crawlers and regular worm away when I dig them up but I have to have gloves on as I can't touch them with my bare fingers.

Snakes, mice, frogs,salamanders, toads, nothing else bothers me.

Connie

Well I did a little research and found some info on them.
I didn't know they turn into those moths you see flying around and sometimes hiding in or under your plants.

Some home remedies include: Placing toads in the garden, wrapping onion stems around the stems of transplants, placing a ring of moist wood ashes around the plants, and placing a toothpick or 16d nail alongside each transplant stem.

This site has some good pics of them
http://mint.ippc.orst.edu/blackcutid.htm

The link below has lots of info...

Here is a link that might be useful: Cutworm Factsheet

hostasformez4 - Reasonable fear is things that actually hurt you. I have several of those. I am leery around hornets beause they have a harsh sting and I been stung. I fear heights. Falling can kill you and I have fallen from moderate heights a few times. Some snakes are poisonous, etc.

Worms can't hurt you. They don't even have hard mouths. I routinely pick them up from the driveway after a rain and toss them into the wet damp soil around plantings and from soil when I have been digging into the bases of neighboring plants. They not only don't bite, they cannot bite. You could hold a worm in your hand for an hour and the only thing you might get is a damp hand.

I know that may not help your wormophobia, but they really can't too anything remotely harmful to you.

hostasformez4, don't feel bad, touching worms creeps me out too. It all goes back to being 4 and getting one stuck under the collar of my shirt...cold and wiggly...yuck! I'll admit I've been picking the cutworms up with tongs. LOL, isn't that crazy? Snakes, wild animals and untamed horses don't phase me a bit, just don't come at me with a worm.

It takes every ounce of bravery I have to hold the worms that my kids find and bring to me in amazement. (can't pass along my silly fear to them!)

BTW - Mr. Stinky is doing a great job every night now with those cutworms!

It seems to me, cutworms wouldn't make much of a snack, but grubs are fat, crunchy and juicy. Are you sure that's not what you're seeing and he's eating?

My worm saga started back in high school when we dissected one in biology.

Night crawlers have hairs on their front end which help to drag then through the soil and that is what I remember feeling when I held a live one years ago and it pulled itself through my fingers. I do a dance trying to avoid them on the sidewalk and driveway after a heavy rain!

The cut worn thing I can handle with gloves and doing away with that kind of worm is no problem.

Thanks for the information and picture so I know what to look for.
Connie

maryann, The things I'm seeing at the base of the eaten hostas are big fat round things maybe up to an inch long and a kind of gross color of grayish brown. They are curled up into a ball when you find them in the soil. Is that a grub? I'll have to get a picture of one of the ugly things. They take huge bites of the hosta leaves and will sometimes chop a leaf off at the base. I guess that's why I assumed they were cutworms. Hmmmm...

I just looked at i dig it's cutworm factsheet and those are the same little buggers I'm seeing. ick!

Flowers, thank you for posting. I'm smiling reading about Mr. Stinky and Pepe... the variety of night-time garden visitors (maybe we're the visitors!) plus I need to go out looking for cutworms, too. Was just putting it off, and wasn't sure exactly what to look for... Now I know!