How to prevent corn earworm and rot

Each year I grow corn the ears are mostly brown and I see the corn earworm caterpillars in them. Us there a natural, organic way to prevent this?

I have not bought any or used any yet, but Spinosad keeps popping up more and more for control of vegetable garden pests. So tomorrow I am going to be out looking for some .

Put a little mineral oil in each ear of corn and keep the corn seperate from celery and tomatoes as they have the same worm as a pest.

Me too, I just dug up my garden of corn and threw it to the deer! Very disgusted, 1st time growing it, not sure if I'll grow it again. I tried everything to get rid of that darn worm, nothing helped! Mt Tom's are good, getting a very good harvest, but I think that worm is eating my pepper plants too! They look the same. I just wanted to add my two cents on this issue. Maybe some one here can help for the fall season's corn, mineral oil is interesting??

The picture's I posted are of my first appearance of my corn silk, and tassels, all looked good, but than i saw worms down in the middle of the stalks. did the neem oil, seven dust to get serious, to no fail, all corn was full of worms, so i pulled the stalks, than found the worms in my squash, than tomato's, and finally found them on a stem of my tomato's. really weird, nasty, and they are gone! I did get rid of them, but just the other day I went out to pull 3 really nice cuke's, and guess what, pin hole's, and when I cut them open, the same darn worm! Anyone know what it is??? Anyway, not everything got attacked, and I had an awesome tomato season so far, as so with the cuke's, and squash, but why some and not others? I have been trying to stay organic, but can"t seem to keep the nasty pest away. Any advice?? I now have watermelon and cantaloupe's beginning to take off, and I don't want these guys attacking them. I still have green beans, and all kinds of peppers plants in, did see some of the same worms, but managed to get rid of them. So Far!!!

Anyway, I'm watching to see what other's say! Thanks, Jami

The worms in the cukes are pickleworms. They eat any curcurbit.

You can bag the cukes, which seems like an impossible task to me, or use regular pesticides. Since the worms live instead the fruit, you have to keep spraying to get the ones still outside in the plant.

It's not supposed to live here ("too cold") but some years I get them anyway. Perhaps my infestations are small, but I just cut around the worms and eat the cukes anyway.

Nicole, the pickleworm winters in Florida, but it migrates as the weather warms. It infects crops as far north as North Carolina. I am having a bad investation of them this year!
Jamibad,
Just to be clear, it is not the same worm in the corn and in the Cucumbers. So it might also be a different worm on some of the other plants. From what I have read the Pickle worm winters over in Florida and Texas, and the best solution is to plant early enough to miss the Pickle Worm, don't know if that would be possible in your location, check with some local gardeners (maybe the Florida forum here on DG) see when they plant. I also read that the pickle worm is hard to control with poison, yet lots of people seem to have success getting rid of them that way also. Maybe the trick is the timing of the spraying, you need to start as soon as the blossoms appear I think.

I'm just happy they aren't a regular visitor here. Then again, if people grew curcurbits commercially here perhaps we'd have a bigger problem.

Jamibad - I forget to mention, if you have worms eating the foliage of plants, you can spray with Bt. It's organic and only kills Lepidoptera that eat the foliage, and won't kill beneficial insects. I use Dipel DF for cabbage worm and it's quite effective, plus stores forever if you keep it cool. It won't however, work on the pickleworm, since they eat on the inside instead of the outside where you spray.

I had two cantaloupe fall off the vine, and low and behold, small pin hole's in them, no worms found when I cut them open, and they were so sweet, so I guess I got to them before what ever started to gorge themselves on my fruit. As for the last 4 of my cukes, all had pin hole's in them, and when I cut them open I found FAT worms, they didn't get through the holes they made, being that fat. they got fat once inside, eating what was to be my food. I'm laughing it off, as this was my 1st year, next year I'll be doing things different. This was a learning experience, but I swear, the year before 2012, I had everything in pots, I didn't have the room I have here in my new home for the raised beds etc. BUT, I never had the pest in the pots, now, it's like a free for all in my garden. Thanks for helping me id what's going on. The more insight I get from everyone, the more I learn. I am on the Florida gardening site, and everyone has given me insight to what's going on, I saw the post about corn, and because it was my first time, decided to join in with my less than average corn experience! Everything looked so good, I was self pollinating, in addition to the bees, and still thought everything was coming along great till " the worms" I was defeated before I could control it. Next year, watch out you little creepy crawly yucky things! Your going to the south of the border!!! lol!!

I noticed in my first post I wrote" Mt Toms's " are doing great, a good harvest! I meant to say, my tomato's were doing great. I haven't weighed what I've harvested, but even with the horn worms, were a sucess! I've managed to get a good supply of tomato's for the freezer, in addition to eating many sandwiches! And still have many to go.
Next year will be different, Thanks for the knowledge and giving me names of the different worms that invade our gardens!

Now, time to go out and walk the garden, it's after 7, cooler out, the humidity is still high, but living where I do, it's like living in a sauna! lol!!

Here are a few pic's I took today of what is happening in my garden!

#1 my cantaloupe, the 3rd pic is befor I cut 1 open, very sweet, These fell apart from their stem( umbilical cord) I thought they were way to soon to be cut open and ate, but I was wrong, In the 3rd pic, you can see where something started to try to get into one of the cantaloupe's, but once I cut it open, no damage was done to the edible part! I have some green beans still coming off the plant, I made a big pot of Ham and Green Beans, so tasty!!! The 4th picture is of my corn plants, far left in the rear, not doing well, this is the white sweet corn, I planted away for the other that I pulled out, going to do thee same here, the corn was flooded twice, and is stunted in growth, compared to the corn I already pulled, to the right, on the fence, are my cantaloupe's and watermelon. The last picture show's you the cuke's and squash I was harvesting, BEFORE the worms took over! As I said, next year, they will be history. I'm having my DH build me canopy's over my RB's, and I hope things go a lot better!

Thanks for the info everyone, I always can count on DG people to save the day ! ☺☺☺☺♥♥♥♥♥ Jami

Here's an early picture of my RB's!! When things were looking good!

From what Ive read each crop is attacked by a different worm. I've found more worms eating my tomato fruit this year then ever before, but it's still not really bad. I gave up growing corn years ago nothing I did kept the worms away.