Try using foil. Cut it in 2" strips and wrap firmly around the stem at the soil line. I'm sure I remember those toothpicks failing on me too, but perhaps I didn't get them close enough to the stem.

You can try salvaging the tomato tops, even if they are pretty wilted. I always start them in water and they will root after a few days so it's not a total loss.

Good luck!
Linda

I automatically plant all single plants like tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and basil in collars made of yogurt cups with the bottom cut out. Kind of homely, but effective. some years I put collars around my potato plants as well. I always have cutworms, but this year they seem worse. My problem now is the row crops like onions, peas, and leeks. I am spending quite a bit of time on cutworm hunts in the soil around plants with nibbled leaves and am planning to spray some Bt on the plants since they are caterpillars.

I use plastic drink straws and/or popsickle sticks. Never lost a plant when using either. But what ever you use has to be flush up against the stem to work well.

Another old farmer's trick is a band pf cornmeal around the base of the plant. The cutworms supposedly love it and eat it but they can digest it so they swell up and die.

Dave

Thanks for all..just got back in swarmed by mosquitos...
put cardboard around some, more long toothpicks around others, found 5 cut worms..now I will cut the small yoghurt containers (I used them for transplanting up the tomatoes before they went into plastic beer glasses)..then out to the garden to get
chewed up by cutworms..
cheers and hope, martha/zucchini

yoghurt containers big and small, and wooden skewers all protecting the rest of the plants now...I am happy I have about 10 more that are not planted yet as they were too small for the big wild world..(started my seeds late this year)..will never plant any that are not with big thick stems again..
cheers and hope, Martha/zucchini

I have Popsicle sticks to use.

So I surround the stem with them? Then just adjust as it thickens? Sorry trying to get a visual.

At what thickness are they safe from the little buggers...or are they?

I've grown them for 3 years and thankfully have never had any.

Maybe due to the all the sparrows around??

Thanks!

One popsicle stick flush against one side of the plant stem and half in the soil 1/2 above. You could put one on each side if you wish but I have never found it necessary.

Cutworms work by encircling the stem. The sticks block them from doing it. You can leave the stick in place permanently if you wish as long as it isn't keeping the stem from expanding.

Dave

Thank you Dave.

So do you think the birds have saved them in the past, or have I just been lucky?

I think that you have just been lucky. In my experience, cutworms spend daylight hours under the soil surface, and they do their surface cutting at night. Birds don't get a chance to see and eat them.

I use plastic rings cut out of soda or water bottles. The rings are about 1.5" high, and there is a vertical cut through the ring so it can be placed around the stem. I try to push the ring into the soil about 1/4".

Prior to planting out tomatoes, peppers, etc , I plant radishes throughout the area. They are a quick, early crop but many get hit by the cutworms. Where I find a cut radish, I scratch around in to soil until I find the cutworm and squish it. I still get plenty of radishes, and most of the cutworms have been eliminated by the time that I plant the other crops.

Dave, thanks for mentioning the fact that the cutworms have to encircle the stem to be able to start gnawing, b/c I didn't get a chance to do that last night.

Martha,again, good to see you and IMO any kind of collars, yogurt cups and similar are not effective b'c the cutworms can still crawl up under them.

I always used sturdy twigs, most of the time from last years Queen Annes Lace plants that were around and it did help/

For those who say that this or that worked, remember that there are those years when there are NO cutworms around so you can 't say that this or that method worked.

The best prevention of all is to raise plants that have sturdy stems,plants that have been grown slow and cool.The cutworms prefer to go after wimpy stemmed plants first b/c those are the ones they can encircle the easiest. .

Carolyn