Help! My seeds are just being nipped off at the base!

Jabberwock

Sounds like cutworm damage to me, have a wee dig around in the soil, during the day these guys lurk just under the surface and come out and wreak havoc at night, here's a link to be able to identify them http://www.uri.edu/ce/factsheets/sheets/cutworms.html
but don't be fooled by the picture of the one in the link, they come in many different colours.

Steel_2

Kay_Peel wrote: »

Talking of hedgehogs.

One climbed up the back step, into the kitchen and I found him eating the remains of the cat's dinner.

The cat was standing nearby, looking furious. (She'd only taken a short breather from eating and had left the best bits till last!)

He visits most evenings (and probably stays overnight) and is very interested in my decaying tree stump rather than my pots.

We foster baby hedgehogs over the winter and they love cat food. There may be interesting grubs around the decaying tree stump, although you can never be sure - they are intensely curious about everything, so much so we end up rescuing them from all sorts of daft scrapes.

They spend a few months with us and then head for the fields, although one stayed all year in 2009, had late babies in September and then kindly left all four of them to us for fostering and disappeared.

I'm sure there is a sign in hedgehog language somewhere in the garden that says "suckers lives here"

Steel_2

Mrs_Money wrote: »

Hi - hope someone out there knows what this is! For several years now I've grown small varieties of carrots and mixed salad leaves in two old butler sinks in my garden. This year one sink is fine and has 3 lovely bushy rows of salad leaves, doing very well and tasting even better - but the other sink is not doing well as every day I water, I find seedlings just laying on the compost - not eaten, but eaten through at the base of the stem. I don't think it's vine weevil grubs because the roots are still in the ground.
I've carefully scaped around in the compost to see if I can see anything - but there's nothing to see - although a couple of days ago I did see one solitary ant crawling around the surface of the compost.
Anyone got any ideas what this could be?

I find ants usually kills from the bottom of a plant - their nests end up opening air pockets underground that starve the plants roots of nutrients.

I would have thought birds would have ended up yanking out the whole thing or snapping the seedling off.

If it were slugs or snails I'm surprised they ate the stem not the leaves of the seedlings. However, I have had snails in the past destroy my fennel seedlings by chomping the base of the stems only.

Perhaps as someone said, they are the small black ground dwelling slugs. They don't leave much if any trail from what I can see in my kitchen garden but I know they are there because I dig them up sometimes.

Have you thought about mulching round your seedlings with sharp gritty stones just in case it is slugs?