Tree,

Last year we had a really big problem in many parts of the state with caterpillars devouring our seedlings. In many areas, it was climbing cutworms but there were many other leaf-eating pests as well. Some gardeners had trouble with spring army worms.

Peppers are solanums and are in the same family as tomatoes so it is possible you had tiny tomato hornworms. Although I rarely see tomato or tobacco hornworms on my pepper plants, some people have a lot of trouble with hornworms on their pepper plants. If not hornworms, then the caterpillars on your peppers could have been almost anything. While some caterpillars, like monarchs, need to feed on a specific host plant, there are many other caterpillars that will eat almost any plant.

There's a couple of ways to protect the plants. One would be to put some sort of floating row cover over them. That row cover would exclude all pests from them. Or, you could spray your plants with a biological/organic pesticide that contains an active ingredient called Bt 'kurstaki'. It is a specific strain of bacteria that kills caterpillars after they eat plants that have been sprayed with it. Unfortunately it can take a day or so to kill them, but they usually stop feeding shortly after ingesting it. The Bt 'kurstaki' is found in many different commercial products and usually those products are labeled as worm killers or caterpillar killers. I'll link for you the one I most often see in stores here so you'll have an idea of what to look for. Be sure you get the kind of Bacillus thuringensis that is called 'kurstaki' because it is the one that kills caterpillars. There are other forms of Bt that kill other pests. For example, Bt 'israelenis' kills mosquito larvae and Bt 'san diego' kills Colorado potato beetles.

It is best to buy your Bt product early in spring before the caterpillars arrive because it can be very hard to find it in stores once after arrive. Last year, Bt was impossible to find in stores in my area for at least 6 weeks. By the time they had the Bt back in the stores, the caterpillars already had devoured everyone's plants.

A second option would be to spray the young seedlings with Neem oil, also found in many organic pesticides. It is an antifeedant and they'll stop eating after they ingest it. Just check the labels. The Wal-Mart stores near me usually have a Neem product on the shelves as early as January or February. It usually is with the organic products inside near the aisle that has Miracle Grow plant food, seed-starting flats, etc. Just check the label for either Neem oil of azidarachtin as the mail ingredient.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: One Example of a Bt Worm Killer Product

Thank you
I've never used chemicales before
they won't kill the good bugs
TREE

I doubt they were hornworms, like Dawn says. You can always ID a hornworm by the typical "horn" on the last segment of the caterpillar's body. They would probably be much larger larvae than you mention, too, even as a newly hatched larva.

Moth species outnumber butterfly species by 10:1. Most are "generalist" feeders, with a few in the silk and sphinx group, and a few others, having specific host plants they use. I agree with Dawn totally, that they were probably some sort of army or climbing cutworm. Cutworms particularly love the tender foliage of seedlings. You may occasionally find them on larger plants, but that is most likely a fluke, or lack of better food for them.

BT kills all caterpillars that come into contact with it. Drift from it to other plants can affect the "good" caterpillars. I used it last year as a last resort on a Baptisia that had been under a third attack by Genista moth caterpillars. They will completely defoliate a plant. While the Baptisia always grew back new foliage, I just wasn't sure how many times it would survive defoliation. I waited for a day when it was less windy than most days in Oklahoma, and sprinkled the powder (the form of BT I used) on the foliage. It worked well. Just also know that pests will attract the beneficial insects that feed on them. If you have no pests, the beneficials will pass your garden up. Hey, a beneficial has to have food, too! In spring, mama birds are in the garden looking for food for their little ones.

I'm not sure how seedlings will tolerate BT, though. Dawn? I know it is considered an organic, but "organic" shouldn't necessarily be confused with being "safe" or "harmless". And a lot of times we don't know the long-term effects until years and years down the road.

I've not yet experienced caterpillars eating that many seedlings either. Sometimes that can just be chalked up to a freak incident and it may never happen again.....at least to that extent. But, to be on the safe side, I would do as Dawn suggests. What a pain to have to start all over again because of a batch of hungry little worms!

Here's to better luck this year!

Susan

Tree,

I don't like spraying any pesticides but the Bt 'kurstaki' only targets that one pest. I am really careful not to spray it on desirable flowers....and last year was the very first time I've ever sprayed it on my whole garden. If I hadn't sprayed, the caterpillars would have eaten everything down to the ground. They already were well on their way to doing that, having gobbled up many young seedlings, before I finally sprayed. If there was any way I could have avoided spraying, I would have.

I absolutely hate spraying anything at all and hope I never have to do it again. I have used Bt once or twice since moving here in 1999, but on those other occasions I only sprayed the broccoli and cabbage to keep the cabbage worms off of them, and I sprayed at the time of day when butterflies are not likely to be active.

I've never sprayed a broad-spectrum pesticide in my current garden and we've lived here since 1999, and hope I never am driven to that degree of desperation by the insects. I always choose something that targets only the pest I am fighting, if there is such a pesticide available. That's why I like the different formulations of Bt---they each target a specific pest and don't harm anything else. The drawback to using Bt 'kurstaki' is that it would affect not just bad caterpillars that are damaging your seedlings, but also the good caterpillars that give us many beautiful butterflies and moths. I just do my best to spray only the plants that need it and I try to keep it off of all flowers.

Susan, I am still in shock that you sprayed Bt. Let me pick myself up off the floor. (I am grinning as I type that.) I would have bet money that you spraying Bt 'kurstaki' never, ever would happen. : ) I understand why you did it though and I likely would have done the same thing in that circumstance.

I don't worry about Bt. It breaks down immensely fast and doesn't linger in the soil or anything. I am less certain about neem, but I rarely use neem. When I do use it, I tend to spray it directly on a pest. Last year I had black blister beetles congregating on my cucumber leaves one day. I brought out a spray bottle of neem from the garden shed and sprayed it directly on them and the leaves they were on. They fell to the ground and I never saw them again. A few days later, blister beetles popped up on the Armenian cucumbers and I sprayed them the same way with the same results. I don't know if the neem oil killed them or just made them mad enough that they went away, but either way, they no longer were on the cucumber plants eating the leaves.

I agree that a product's being organic does not equate to being safe or harmless. All it means, in the strictest sense, is that the product is of natural origin, not synthetic origin. There are organic pesticides (rotenone and sabadilla being two of them) that I never, ever would use under any circumstance, and when I first went organic and read about them, I immediately decided I wouldn't touch them with a 10-foot-pole. I'd rather use a chemical pesticide than use those 2 organic pesticides. I don't even use pyrethrum except in the most drastic cases because it can cause nerve damage in felines, and I love my kitties. Also, even if I didn't have pet cats, the fact that many pyrethrum products have a synthetic carrier/synergist called PBO bothers me and is another reason to avoid its use. Once again, on the rare occasion I use a pyrethrum, I spray it right on the insect that is being a problem and I make sure the kitty cats are inside the house before I use it. I can count the number of times I have used pyrethrum on even a single plant on the fingers of one hand....and still have a couple of fingers left over.

Bt shouldn't hurt seedlings at all in terms of any sort of side effects. It is strictly a bacteria that affects the gut of the caterpillars after they ingest it.

Neem sprayed on seedlings would be more persistent, which is why I avoid using it as a broad-spectrum pesticide and only spray it on a target plant if I have to.

I'd be more likely to use Spinosad if I had an issue in the garden that demanded it, but I've never sprayed it on anything other than an isolated plant here or there. Spinosad will kill some beneficial insects, so I avoid it as much as possible. A lot of organic gardeners spray Spinosad at the first sign of any pest, and I just don't understand that. I'd rather let the beneficial insect population deal with the pest insect population. If you whip out Spinosad every time a pest insect shows up, you're going to hurt your beneficial insect population.

I'd rather just let the good insects take care of the bad insects, but when you're dealing with something like caterpillars devouring seedlings, you have to take pretty drastic action to stop them immediately or you won't have a garden at all.

Last year I know that lots of folks used chemicals they normally wouldn't, and I support them 100% in those decisions. Trying to garden as organically as possible is a good thing, but sometimes in drought years there are such awful outbreaks of highly damaging insects that you simply have to use a pesticide to save your garden, and I understand that.

I never really used many pesticides ever in my life. I think we used Kelthane for spider mites once in Fort Worth in the mid-1980s, and not only did it not seem to help much, it seemed like the spider mites got drastically worse after we sprayed. That taught me a lesson right there and was when I began converting to organics. I probably used Sevin dust once or twice a year back in the 1980s, but even then I just dusted it onto a specific plant or row of plants that had a pest issue. I've just never been one to use pesticides much even before I started gardeing organically, and I am even less inclined to use them now.

When I was a kid, my dad used pesticides. I still can remember the spray can of nasty-smelling DDT he carefully put away in a tall cabinet after each use so we kids couldn't and wouldn't get into it. After I got married and began gardening mostly without chemicals, he decreased his use of them gradually until he was almost totally organic too. I think that the constant use of broad-spectrum pesticides causes more problems than it solves. Don't even let me get started on the topic of Bt-corn or Roundup-Ready crops.

I am very lucky, because I lived in Fort Worth and was converting to organics when Howard Garrett was becoming a very vocal advocate of gardening the natural way. I learned so much from listening to his radio show and from reading his newspaper columns and books. Mostly what I learned was that even with organic products there can be risks and you really have to do your research before you use them. That made me pay attention to what was available and to research it thoroughly before I used it.

I've linked the page from his website below where he discusses the use of PBO in pyrethrum (and other) products. Thanks to Howard Garrett, I've always carefully read the labels of products like DE and orange oil, too, to make sure I'm not buying one that's had PBO added to it. Sometimes that means I have to make a longer drive to a nursery that sells strictly organic formulations instead of picking up the one product in local stores that has PBO in it, but it is worth the longer drive to have the safer product.

I wonder if any of us will know what to do in a good year when rainfall is plentiful and the bad bugs don't come in such huge, destructive waves? Well, assuming we ever have a wet year again.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Dirt Doctor: Pyrethrum Dangers

Dear Chemicals kill everything. Even the little birds who think their getting an easy meal.