On Tuesday, April 29, 2014 8:21:54 AM UTC-4, Pat Kiewicz wrote:
said:



What about Pepper plants? I planted 10 and they were gone. I planted

another 1 yesterday as a test

and this morning it is gone. I have never had anything eat pepper plants.. I

am so frustrated



Is there anything left, like a stump or bare stem? Did you plant into

a freshly cleared bed?



The pest that is most likely to take out new transplants (in my garden) is

the cutworm. Two tactics I use to limit the threat is to completely clear

a bed of weeds and litter one week before I set out transplants. The other

is (with larger transplants) to wrap the stems with a strip of newspaper

when I set them out. For smaller transplants, you could cut the bottom off

a yogurt tub and push it down into the soil to create a 'wall' around the

plant.



(For some reason my newsreader keeps claiming there are no unread

messages in this group, so I finally just asked for the dozen most recent

and found your post.)



--

Pat in Plymouth MI



"Yes, swooping is bad."



email valid but not regularly monitored

It is not cut worm. I talked to the extension office today. Apparently the black plastic I used to cover the gardens for the winter made these critters very happy. Also because the weeds were not as prevalent we didn't use the tiller this spring. So now with the plants they are fat, dumb and happy. We have built cages and have set out about 10 plants for now. We bought some traps and will use them as soon as these North Carolina storms are done with us. They were set last night and the rain tripped all of them. I was also told that Rat poison will work too.
Thanks for your insight. These newsgroups are on their way out so I am told.. I guess it is just us old die hard's hanging on.
MJ