I have spinach, radish and pea seedlings which are just getting their first true leaves established. This morning I noticed that some of the spinach and radish seedlings were missing leaves and a few were leveled (though the stem remains at ground level). The same with the peas except in their case I saw some fragments of the leafy tops laying about. The other leafy tops were all eaten I assume.

What has me scratching my head is that the damage is very localized. i.e. in a square foot with 16 robust radish seedlings, there is this small section of 2 or 3 that got hit. Towards the center of the bed too, not like something was cruising along the side and reached over for a snack. In a long row of pea seedlings there are 4 consecutive seedlings that were eaten. I dug around the peas to check for cutworms and no dice... though I would be surprised to see cutworms in any of these plots because I really turned them over well, lovingly by hand, to incorporate new compost just before planting. I really think that I might have caught a few then as I was examining that soil at the time, wouldn't they be pretty big to wreak this much havoc? These seedlings were not showing any damage at all before today... I highly doubt cutworm larvae can strike like this soon after they hatch, and if they are bigger cutworms what would they have been eating to get big? Also I don't see any slug trails. Went out with the flashlight tonight but only see nightcrawlers. I wonder if the very recent heat wave we've been having (80's) has caused some other insect to become active before it normally would...

Any guesses?

- C