Walk fields as plants emerge to monitor for damage.
It is recommended to scout for cutworms by digging into the soil around damaged seedlings during the day or by searching with a flashlight at night when larvae are most active. An earlier Penn State Extension article more thoroughly describes black cutworm characteristics. In the daytime, they burrow beneath the soil surface. As the larvae emerge, they feed on small crop seedlings at night and can completely cut the plants off at the base. Typically, these lepidopteran pests cannot survive the cold temperatures of Pennsylvania winters, but the adult moths migrate northward from the Gulf Coast in late winter and early spring when they lay their eggs on grasses, dense patches of weeds, and field debris. Black cutworm ( Agrotis ipsilon (Hufnagel)) can devastate young corn plantings in early spring.
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