Monday, June 14, 2010

Tomato Hornworm

Whenever you see something like this (little black specks)…

DSC_1539_4444 …look further up on the tomato plant and you’ll probably find something like this.

DSC_1111_1331 Some gardeners will leave caterpillars alone and  let them eat as much as they like.  Not this gardener.  Tomato Hornworms are plucked for the plant and set out for the birds to gobble up.  The birds and I are higher up on the food chain.  Besides, bugs outnumber humans by a whole bunch (high math speak).

It’s probably easier to simply destroy the eggs before they hatch; but that would be a very difficult egg hunt.  I don’t like squashing them; so I simply harvest them for the birds.

By the way birds, stay out of the garden.  Everything is getting nice and ripe.

The next pest adventure is to find out what’s nibbling on the leaves of my Black Hungarian Pepper plants.

DSC_1541_4446

3 comments:

Bill Bird said...

Last year I had one of my best years ever in terms of tomato production. I mean it was just an OUTSTANDING year. Everything was picture perfect. How perfect? For the first time in recent memory -- I didn't discover a single, solitary hornworm. Now, you think a couple with 44 tomato plants would probably have some considerable hornworm problems. Guess again. It will just go down as the "perfect year." We're two months behind you Maybelline. I expect to discover a few of these bad boys as summer rolls along...

Curbstone Valley Farm said...

I'm not particularly squeamish...but tomato hornworms would always give me the shivers. They're just so unnaturally large. We had a quite a problem with them in our last garden, and it's amazing how much damage they can do! I hope you figure out who's nibbling on your pepper plants soon.

MAYBELLINE said...

*Bill - Here's to hoping you get a repeat perfect year in the garden.
*Curb - I still haven't found the pepper pest.