Worm inside of stem
 

One of my Big Mamas started wilting suddenly, so I pulled it (it was the only plant out of 80 or so that was wilting). When I examined the plant, I noticed a small hole in the stem close the soil line. I split the stem open and noticed there was a hollow cavity and saw a worm burrowed in there pretty good. I threw the whole plant into the burn barrel. A week or so later, one of my Polish Linguisa plants started doing the same thing- pulled it up and again a worm had burrowed into the stem close to the soil line.

I've never seen this before (then again, this is only the fourth garden I've grown). Only two plants out of the 80 some-odd I've planted have fallen victim to this bug, so I'm not overly concerned, but I'm curious what it is and if there is anything I can do to prevent attack on some of my other plants (I only have a couple plants of some varieties, and I want to see them through the season).

Sorry about the picture quality, I only had my cellphone on me at the time.

I get striped worms in lots of plants - phlox, peppers, weeds - anything. Most of mine are not at the base and so I don't lose the whole plant. I usually lose the whole stem trying to find the worm but not always. I am glad you reminded me to dust my dahlia because they are the worst when they get borers. You don't know it until the wind blows and the your dahlia breaks because of borers. I assume a moth lays the egg on the stem and them the cat enters the stem and eats.

I've had to deal with those things twice in the past and hope to never see them again. I found the only thing that stopped them was to spray all the stems and fruit with liquid Sevin with some molasses mixed in to make it stick better. I only had to spray one time to stop any new worms. I wish I had done it much sooner the first time I ran into them. I kept trying to get them with BT but had no luck and by the time I used the Sevin they had ruined a third of my plants.

Bill