Cornmeal in The Garden
If you are like me, you don’t like to use chemicals in your garden. It becomes problematic though, when you go outside one morning and find your freshly planted little tomatoes or peppers have been decimated by an unseen predator. If you haven’t seen slugs or snails in the yard, then the plant destroyers are probably cutworms.
Cutworms, which are actually moth larvae, live just below the surface of your soil and, true to their name, can tear right through your flowerbeds. They come in many colors and range from one to two inches in length. One way to recognize them is to remember that “C is for cutworm”—they usually curl up into a C shape when you touch them.
To get rid of cutworms, try sprinkling yellow cornmeal around the plants, say entomologists who specialize in nontoxic pest control. The cutworms like to eat the cornmeal, but unfortunately for them, they can’t digest it, so they die. Sprinkle it on the ground around your plants and let them enjoy their last meal.
