Update: This post is from May when I found wireworms eating my tomato plants. If I had prepared some traps in March these could have been saved. Plan now, save your plants too. Don’t let the wireworms win.
Finally some nice weather has me outside to check on my newly transplanted early tomatoes and…WHAT THE?!
The wilty and pale sad little transplants looked perfectly healthy 2 days ago.
I pulled one up to replace it with a backup and WHAT THE %$^&%$%^&*?! There’s wireworms eating them from the inside out.
I think this one is actually drooling….
I dug around in the soil only to find a whole bunch of these ugly critters. I had planted lettuce transplants early in the season in the same raised bed which all mysteriously disappeared days after planting. I blamed the slugs. I killed LOTS of baby slugs to terrify the other hidden slugs. But could it have been these nasty little wireworms that ate my lettuce?
If you recently transformed a grassy part of your yard to a garden bed (check out Turning Lawn into a Vegetable Garden with Raised Beds) then you may have an abundance of wireworms just waiting for tender seedlings. The best way to remove them is by setting up a wireworm trap.
Cut a potato in half and skewer it with a long stick. Bury the potato in the soil (or make a few of these for large beds/lots of wireworms), ensuring that the top of the stick stays above the soil so you can find them. In a week or so, carefully dig (not pull) up the trap and remove the wireworms. Replace and keep removing the worms until you don’t find them anymore. You are now ready to plant!
A city girl who learned to garden and it changed everything. Author, artist, Master Gardener. Better living through plants.
Ugh, sorry to hear that! How frustrating. I’m not sure, but they do look an awful lot like inch worms?
potato wireworms maybe?
Oh my goodness, I think he’s mocking you. Grr, is there an organic way to get rid of them?
Saw this on Victorian Kitchen Garden–you stick a carrot in the soil near the plant you want to protect, and every morning you pull out the carrot, and destroy the wireworms that attached themselves to it. So sad about the tomatoes!
Great idea, Vivian! I read somewhere else to use potatoes, but I only had a yam so I have 2 yam halves with skewers through them buried into the soil (skewers so I can easily find and dig them out). This was after I sifted through the soil and handpicked out as many as I can find. I’ll leave the yams until the weekend then try to plant my tomatoes again. Good thing I had backup seedlings!
Nasty little things. I’ve read toilet paper rolls buried around the plant can help with cutworms. Maybe that would help with these things.
Sorry about the tomato plants. I have never seen that before. Good luck getting rid of them.