Something has been chewing my tomato stems

[hank]

This does not sound exactly like slugs, but they are a real problem this year in the northern part of Va. Nightime is their activity time. They tend to eat holes in the leaves or fruit of their target. Bigtime problem for strawberries and corn here. The large population of slugs shows up, curiously, in pokeweed by the holes in their leaves.
After rereading your posts, I think it is a four legged pest as others have suggested. Keep us posted.

[user10]

Cutworms are a hassle. It happened to me many times. I think it depends on the size of the cutworm, specifying where the plant was bit. The best solution in my books is to put aluminum foil or cardboard sheet (4 inch diameter) right around the stem. Not too too tight. The aluminum foil or cardboard sheet must be touching the soil. Plus, always reserve extra plants for problems such as this.

Hope it helps.
user10

[O.P. Mater]

Just saw this and wanted you to know that the same thing happened here. I found the culprit in the top of a tomato plant. It had eaten almost through the stem in about 3 or 4 places. It was a large armyworm......the black ones with stripes down their sides. Now I am finding small ones about 3/4 of an inch long rasping off the outer layer of the stems. They are eating holes in the eggplant and pepper leaves. Am spraying with Bt this evening if it isn't raining.

[kath]

This year I found a cutworm during the day on a tomato leaf, chomping away at a height of about 2'! I even saved the thing and looked it up on the internet because I couldn't believe it. This was after I had seen the tops of 2 plants chewed 3/4 of the way through and couldn't figure out what happened to them. Also found a cutworm that had burrowed into a head of cabbage- you couldn't even see it from the outside and the hole was at least 4" off the ground. tjg911 is also seeing some strange cutworm phenomena this year- what's going on?

kath

[janezee]

Heat stroke