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Cool, wet weather doesn’t hurt black cutworms

The cool, wet spring hasn’t done much to help fight off black cutworms.  In fact, Purdue entomologist Christian Krupke says it’s actually made it worse by decreasing the time between when weeds are killed and when the corn plant emerges.

He says anytime those two instances are close together – there is an increased opportunity for the black cutworm to feed on the corn plant.  “Ideally you would like a period of time when the weeds are dead or dying before corn starts coming up,” he says.  “And then a lot of those cutworms would die of starvation.  The more you have those two circles overlapping of growing weeds and corn beginning to grow, the more chance you have of cutworms moving on from one crop to the other.”

Krupke says corn isn’t the pests preferred food – but when the weeds are all dead, the cutworms will begin to feed on it.