Magic Mulch and Cutworm Cups

Now, gardeners will do just about anything to keep their beloved plants safe, right? I’m sure you know a neighbor with a 16-foot high fence to keep the predacious and voracious deer at bay? Or how about the folks down the road who run their sprinklers all night in fear of a dreaded frost, and maybe you’ve even had some experience saving sensitive crops by propping up tarps by headlamp at midnight?

Yes, ok, organic gardening can get a little weird sometimes—let’s call it innovative. Try this out for size. You pull up in your aging red pickup truck to the weekly garbage collection with your bags and collapsed boxes. After adding your stash of junk mail and glass bottles, you jump into the recycling dumpster without a flinch and start tossing out everyone else’s Pepsi and Mountain Dew bottles.

“Hey,” the crusty bearded fellow holding down the stand growls as he peers over the lip. “What are you doin’ in there?”

“Just collecting cutworm cups,” you reply cheerily. “When I’m done with them, you can have ‘em back.”

“Cutworm cups?” The man sighs, shakes his head, and thinks to himself…what on earth are those crazy ladies at that farm up to this time!

But ah, those dreaded cutworms! If you have ever kept a garden, then you might know the intense tragedy of finding several of those beloved little transplants lopped off at the base the next morning—the shriveling top laying severed and dying beside it. A ground squirrel, you wonder, or a chipmunk? No my friends, you have been visited by a prowling cutworm, which felled your transplant and proceeded to suck the juices from the remaining stump before lurking onwards towards new prey.

You could spray some horrible chemicals, or spread diatomaceous earth (after every time it rains), or you can go dumpster diving for cutworm cups. If money is not a problem for you (or you consume plenty of product that could service as raw materials), then the dumpster thrill can be skipped. But for our tea-toting family, turning other people’s trash into transplant armor seems to be the best solution—especially given that we service quite a few transplants in our large garden.

The theory works like this: start by knowing thy enemy. Cutworms crawl just beneath the surface of the soil. Plant your little seedling transplant in the garden, then take a ring of plastic that is bigger than the width of the little plant’s root plug and slip it over the top of the plant. Firmly press the ring into the soil about one inch, leaving two inches above the soil. As the cutworm approaches the plant, it encounters this slippery plastic ring. It can’t crawl under it (too deep), can’t crawl over it (too high for little cutworm legs), and it can’t chew through it (too tough), so your plant is fully protected. The cutworm would have to hatch from an egg inside the cup in order to eat your transplant and even then it would be trapped from consuming further resources.

So, how to make all these wonderful cups? Take a box cutter and carefully carve off the top and bottom of the plastic bottle, then cut the remaining ring into appropriate segments, keeping each ring whole. With care, these rings can be saved for a second season as well! As you look across our garden in the early season, you might wonder, “Are they farming plastic cups?” But no, fear not, we’re just protecting our precious crop from those obstinate cutworms!

But with cutworm season there also comes the sprouting of weed seeds. Now, just like picking rocks, buckets and buckets and buckets beyond counting of weeds get pinched, whacked, yanked, and cajoled out of the garden each year. Seriously, if vegetable plants could grow as well as the weeds do, farming would be easy! But no, the encroachment must be kept at bay—and no weed-killing sprays for me, thank you.

A scuffle hoe is a handy tool, and some folks use a weed burner, but for many of those crops you just protected with the cutworm cups, mulch is a great option. This is especially true on our farm, where hay and straw left over by the sheep from their outdoor winter play pens needs to be raked up before smothering the grass. Where does all this carbacious carpet go? To the garden, of course!

Lay it down thick before the weeds get started, and the mulch will block the sun, discouraging weed seed germination, as well as smother many of the young upstarts. Organic mulches are also excellent for holding in moisture in our sandy soils; building organic matter through decomposition; sheltering worms, toads, and other beneficial garden creatures; as well as protecting crops from soil-born problems. Mulch can help keep zucchinis and other squash family crops from being covered in grit after a rain. It can help reduce mildews or blights that are carried in the soil, as well as help to prevent erosion.

Here is another example of taking a waste product (stalky, sun-bleached organic matter the sheep don’t want anymore) and turning it into a useful garden remedy (weed suppressant), even if it means a bit more work with a pitch fork and a wheel barrel. Not quite as dramatic as dumpster diving but still quite affective!

This week, as you get out to enjoy the summer sunshine, think about ways to organically integrate something interesting into your garden. Need to trim the willows by the ditch? Strip the leaves and make a trellis for vining sweet peas or pole beans. Find an interesting what’s-it in the back of the garage and turn it into a toad shelter or bird bath. And if you’ve got weeds or cutworms, well, you’ve just heard a little bit about what you can do for those buggers too. See you down on the farm sometime.