Many natural and effective ways can deal with a few cutworms efficiently. However, you need the best insecticide for cutworms to solve a problem at high severity. If not, your plants and your garden can be destroyed quickly and easily. I recommend you some good options on the market below:
On the market, I found these 6 products that are effective enough to handle a large number of cutworms and safe enough to keep your children, your pets, and beneficial insects from harmful impacts.
Here are the best insecticides for cutworms you can buy in 2024:
- Best For Veggie Garden: Monterey Insecticide treatment spray
- Odor-Free: Ortho Home Defense Insect Killer
- Best For Fruit Garden: Bonide Killer Bait
- Fast Acting: Bonide Insecticide Granules
- Best For Lawn: Essentria Insecticide Concentrate
- Best For Long Lasting Control: Ortho Bug B Gon Insect Killer
| 6 Best Insecticides For Cutworms | ||
|---|---|---|
Best For Veggie Garden | Monterey Insecticide treatment spray | |
Odor-Free | Ortho Home Defense Insect Killer | |
Best For Fruit Garden | Bonide Killer Bait | |
Fast Acting | Bonide Insecticide Granules | |
Best For Lawn | Essentria Insecticide Concentrate | |
Best For Long Lasting Control | Ortho Bug B Gon Insect Killer | |
Best For Veggie Garden: Monterey Insecticide treatment spray
- Organic
- Easy and safe to use
- Clear and correct instructions
- Bad smell
Are you an owner of a veggie garden? Do you want to kill cutworms without affecting your vegetables?
Beyond all expectations, Monterey Insecticide treatment spray is strong enough to kill cutworms. However, if you follow the instructions strictly, it won’t harm the beneficial insects in your vegetable garden.
This product has a foliage protector that will protect your vegetable from the impact of the insecticide.
| Monterey Insecticide treatment spray Specifications | |
|---|---|
Weight | 32 oz |
Highlight Features | kill elm spanworm, fall cankerworm, gypsy moth, bagworm, and cabbage looper foliage protector safe for beneficial insects Organic |
Monterey Insecticide treatment spray is powerful enough to kill cutworms and safe enough to keep your vegetables from harmful things.
Odor-Free: Ortho Home Defense Insect Killer
- Easy to use
- Safe
- Quick to work
- No long-lasting
Some insecticide smells could cause severe damages to your important parts, such as nose, throat, and lung tissue, if you inhale them in a certain amount.
Therefore, if you want to kill cutworms while protecting yourself, your pets, and your kids from this harmful chemical smell, the odorless Ortho Home Defense Insect Killer might be helpful.
Everyone usually doubts about the effect of an odorless insecticide; this product can kill 235 insects, including cutworms, of course.
| Ortho Home Defense Insect Killer Specifications | |
|---|---|
Weight | 32 oz |
Highlight Features | Kill spiders, fleas, mosquitoes, ticks, and ants Long-lasting control Creating a barrier to keep insects from entering your house One bottle can treat up to 5,300 sq. ft. |
Although the Ortho Home Defense Insect Killer is free of odor, it is as efficient as other products with a smell.
Best For Fruit Garden: Bonide Killer Bait
- Easy to use
- Super effective
- Safe
- Need to re-apply
Like Monterey Insecticide treatment spray, Bonide Killer Bait can also kill cutworms and protect your fruits from the impact of insecticide, thanks to the fruit protector ingredient.
Plus, this is a safe choice for people and pets. You can enter your garden immediately after applying insecticide without having any problem. But remember to wear protective gear to protect yourself.
| Bonide Killer Bait Specifications | |
|---|---|
Weight | 1.5 lb |
Ingredients | iron phosphate and Spinosad |
Highlight Features | Kill snail, slugs, ants, crickets, pillbugs, sowbugs, cutworms, and earwigs It covers up To 3000 square feet It lasts up to 4 weeks |
Bonide Killer Bait is safe for fruit, so your plants can grow healthy and give many fruits.
Fast Acting: Bonide Insecticide Granules
- Safe for beneficial insects
- Easy to use
- No smell
- Not safe for children and pets
Typically, after applying insecticide, you have to wait for a pretty long time to kill pests and insects. This means that you can’t enter the applied areas during this time.
If you are too busy to wait or you want to see the result soon, you can consider Bonide Insecticide Granules that quickly act within one day. But, its effect can last up to 3 months.
In case you have solved the cutworm issue but haven't used up this granular insecticide, don't worry about wasting it. This product can also be used on your lawn to kill the gross grubs underneath.
| Bonide Insecticide Granules Specifications | |
|---|---|
Weight | 6 lb |
Ingredients | Imidacloprid and Lambda-Cyhalothrin |
Highlight Features | Kill tick, sod webworm, grub, roach, flea, earwig, cutworm, billbug, chinch bug, cricket, and ant fast-acting long-lasting Outdoor use, not indoor |
You can see the effect of Bonide Insecticide Granules very quickly, but its effectiveness can last long.
Best For Lawn: Essentria Insecticide Concentrate
- Safe
- Good smell
- Not pricey
- Easy to use
- Not 100% effective, but cutworms decrease significantly
A lawn is usually pretty large. If you just have some cutworms on your lawn, I don’t highly recommend you to use insecticide. You should apply natural and efficient ways instead. If your lawn has a severe problem with cutworms, requiring you to use insecticide, a liquid treatment like Essentria Insecticide Concentrate works best.
With granular products, it takes you more effort and time to spread granules over a large lawn. In some cases, you even have to buy a spreader to perform this task.
This liquid insecticide allows you to apply by using a sprayer to distribute the product on a larger surface more evenly.
| Essentria Insecticide Concentrate Specifications | |
|---|---|
Weight | 8.8 Pounds |
Ingredients | Rosemary Oil, Geraniol 600, and Peppermint Oil |
Highlight Features | Kill spiders stable lice, tic, poultry lice, mosquitoes, mites, maggots, litter beetles, gnats, darkling beetles, bedbugs, livestock, whiteflies, tent caterpillars, sod webworms, scale insects, mole crickets, mites, mealybugs, lace bugs, Japanese beetles, Hyperodes weevils, Grasshoppers, Fleas, Earwigs, cutworms, crickets, chiggers, chinch bugs, billbugs, beetles, bagworms, armyworms, aphids, and ants Useful in both indoor and outdoor Safe for pets |
The liquid Essentria Insecticide Concentrate allows you to spray it over your large lawn quickly and easily.
Best For Long Lasting Control: Ortho Bug B Gon Insect Killer
- Affordable
- Easy to use
- Leaves residue
If my lawn doesn’t have a severe problem with cutworms, I will never want to use insecticide, even the safest one.
Why?
It takes too much time and effort on my end, so I always appreciate products that have long-lasting effectiveness, like Ortho Bug B Gon Insect Killer. It starts killing cutworms within a couple of minutes, and its effect lasts up to 6 months.
| Ortho Bug B Gon Insect Killer Specifications | |
|---|---|
Weight | 32oz |
Highlight Features | Kill hobo, brown recluse, black widow Effectiveness lasts up to 6 months. Kill 235 spices Fast to act |
Ortho Bug B Gon Insect Killer can control cutworms in your lawn and garden half-yearly.
How To Choose The Best Insecticide For Cutworms?
If you choose the wrong-sized shirt, you just waste your money. However, making a wrong decision on an insecticide endangers yourself, your kids, your plants, and other beneficial insects. Before picking up any unit, make sure that your option has passed the following questions:
Is The Insecticide Safe For Your Plants?
As you know, cutworms love chewing seedlings and young plants that are pretty sensitive and weak. So, you shouldn’t use a too strong insecticide that has potential hazards. Some safe options include low-odor or odorless formulations or ones with low vapor pressure like bait formulations.
You also shouldn’t choose products containing solvents like EC formulations because they are the cause of phytotoxicity. Instead, you had better consider formulations without solvents, such as CS, SC, and WP formulations.
Which Type Of Insecticide Can Kill Cutworms?
We can divide all insects and pests into 3 main groups: flying in the air, crawling on the ground, and hiding under the ground.
For flying pests, the aerosol formulation is the most suitable and efficient solution.
Cutworms belong to both 2 grounds: crawling on the ground and hiding under the ground because they live underground during the day and move on the ground to search for food at night.
Usually, the residual spray formulation or dust can kill crawling pets. You just need to let it stay on the surface and wait for cutworms to contact it. However, this is not good for your seedlings and young plants, which cutworms want to attack. They are weak, small, and short, so it’s effortless to be affected.
Finally, the bait formulation is the safest and most efficient way. You just need to mix this active ingredient with food or an attractive substance. The cutworms are killed by eating the bait containing the pesticide.
Because of the selective active ingredients, make sure that cutworms are listed on the product label.
Is The Insecticide Affected By Environmental Factors?
Some insecticides’ effects decrease under the exposure to environmental factors.
Here are some examples:
The high temperature will decrease the effect of chlorinated hydrocarbon and OP insecticides. Meanwhile, the CS formulation of chlorpyrifos won’t be affected by high temperatures.
You need to pay attention to this thing when choosing insecticide.
Which Brands Make The Best Insecticide For Cutworms?
If you don’t have any experience in buying insecticide for cutworms, you can believe in the product quality of the following brands. They focus on their product quality as much as possible.
Monterey
This brand was founded in 1963 in California, Fresno, with the old name “Monterey Ag Resources.”
After 25 years, they became Monterey Lawn and Garden Products, which is Brandt Consolidated’s subsidiary. They sell fertilizer and plant protection products.
In addition to insecticide, Monterey is also well-known for their fungicide for garden plants, flowers and lawn.
Bonide
In 1926, Bonide started producing and selling high-quality products to solve garden pests, lawn, and home problems such as insecticide, fungicide or insect repellent.
FAQs
How do I know if I have cutworms?
You can identify cutworms through their looks. Due to many species, it’s a little hard to identify them. They vary in colors from black, brown, green, and even pink, significantly muted stripes running along the body. They will curl up into a “C” if they are disturbed. So, you can find out the killer by running your hand over the soil and rolling over soil clumps and other potential hiding positions within one foot from where your plant is cut. You, for example, can find common black cutworms in vegetable gardens. Meanwhile, the grayish-brown greasy-looking cutworms grow up to 2 inches in length.
If you want to look for some cutworms, you should spend time in the evening because cutworms tend to hide by day and feed by night.
Once cutworms attack your plants, they might wilt under the heat of the sun. In severe cases, the steams are severely damaged, even cut in 2. The weaker plants (seedlings and young transplants) are, the worse conditions are.
Cutworms usually have their burrows near the grass base to cut the blade in this area and return to their “home” quickly. When checking the lawn, remember to pay attention to the tiny tunneling holes under green excrement. If you don’t care about this thing, your lawn can be destroyed by these cutworms just after summer.
Why do I have so many cutworms?
Simply, it is because you grow their favorite foods - common vegetables. Some of them include tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, peas, lettuce, corn, celery, carrots, crucifers, cabbage, beans, and asparagus.
How do you control cutworms chemically?
The most effective way is to apply insecticides in the evening, which is the feeding time of cutworms. You just should treat the infested patches instead of the whole field to save more.
Does hydrogen peroxide kill cutworms?
Yes.
How often should you apply insecticide for cutworms?
You should apply insecticide for cutworms any time when your garden reaches the maximum severity.
Conclusion
What’s more, you should choose a product that can meet your needs. For example, while some work best for vegetable gardens, others are great for fruit gardens.
Remember to share your idea and thinking about this issue in the comment section.
Harry RamosI’m Harry Ramos, who's crazy about all things green. I’m here to share some experience in my gardening adventure and how to choose the best products for your garden. Let's dig in, get our hands dirty, and celebrate the simple, earthy pleasures of the garden together!
