Flashlight, from below. Duh.

The last few nights I have gone out with a flashlight to try and find what is attacking my basil but I didn't have any luck. Last night I went out and immediately found a flea beetle. It gets to be a bit redundant when searching through 12 basil plants and then it occurred to me to shine the light from below. This may very well be something that those with more experience have found but I'm new to this and there are new gardeners here all the time so I thought I would share. Placing the flashlight under the plant you can quickly see if there are any pests under of ontop of the leaf. I was even ably to determine that I was looking at a mosquito on the underside of a leaf by his shadow. I found a small army worm on the underside but he never moved and seemed sick so I guess he found the B.T. I put out before I found him. Shining the light from below made it much easier to search all my plants at night.

Very cool. Thanks for the hint!

I love those A HAAA! moments! Well done!

I tried this again lat night and found 3 or 4 of the tiniest army worms (I think that is what they were). It looks like they just hatched. They were much smaller than maggots and were the same color as the underside of a basil leaf but they had faint markings of an army worm. I would have never seen these without their enlarged shadow being cast on the leaf by the light below. I feel like superman with X-ray vision and I have leveled the playing field. Again this may not be anything new to yall that have been doing this for a while but I'm fairly new and last night I was able to kill 3 or 4 army worms with my bare hands before they ever munched on my plants. This rocks.

Love it! Going out tonight with my flashlight!

Thanks for the neat idea! It'd make it easier to spot slugs, too. So take along your little bucket of ammonia-enhanced water to drop them suckers in as you duck-walk along the rows.

Thanks millions for posting this! It's not something I would have ever thought of, but it works so well! Tonight I was able to spot and drown some nasty little worms making my tomato plant leaves look like Swiss cheese. Methinks another trip out tomorrow night with my trusty flashlight is in order. I may have to make this a regular thing!