Re: Tomato Horn Worm ? ID

**camprn** 7/29/2011, 2:56 pm

I would say you did very well and headed off the infestation damage! Now you know what you are looking for, so you will be ahead of the game. Growing toms in containers has a whole other set of problems and it will not guarantee that there will not be an infestation...

Lumber is just down the road if you have a pressing need to make more boxes! Twisted Evil

The picture of the horn worms and the moth it becomes?

NHGardener 7/29/2011, 3:34 pm

oops, nope, your avatar picture. I look at it and think - pinwheel?

**walshevak** 7/29/2011, 4:02 pm

NHGardener wrote:oops, nope, your avatar picture. I look at it and think - pinwheel?

I just took a close look and realized it is CARROTS. Wow! Are those some you harvested yourself Camprn?

Kay

**camprn** 7/29/2011, 4:16 pm

walshevak wrote:
NHGardener wrote:oops, nope, your avatar picture. I look at it and think - pinwheel?

I just took a close look and realized it is CARROTS. Wow! Are those some you harvested yourself Camprn?

Kay

Nope, this is my original avatar from last year, but I have some carrots in the garden that looks like this. It was a good carrot year for me.

Nonna.PapaVino 7/29/2011, 4:25 pm

boffer wrote: I figure that having no hornworms or SVB is our consolation for unpredictably lousy weather!

And a healthy population of bats, which hunt at night when the sphynx moth does its thing. Which is why I don't mind the bat poop on the car from the nights they hang under the deck to finish their insect meals....don't know where they roost in the daytime, but we have no hornworms and no corn ear worms either. Nonna

NHGardener 7/29/2011, 4:59 pm

Sadly, our bat population here in the northeast is diminishing due to the white nose fungus. We used to have 2 bats that came back every summer. I saw one for a while way back in June, but even he's gone now. Now I count on the dragon flies to do mosquito control.

NHGardener 7/29/2011, 4:59 pm

I didn't know carrots came in all those colors! Seriously?

**camprn** 7/29/2011, 6:07 pm

NHGardener wrote:I didn't know carrots came in all those colors! Seriously?

Tomato Horn Worm ? ID - Page 2 Carrot_Carnival_org_lg

**camprn** 7/29/2011, 6:08 pm

NHGardener wrote:Sadly, our bat population here in the northeast is diminishing due to the white nose fungus. We used to have 2 bats that came back every summer. I saw one for a while way back in June, but even he's gone now. Now I count on the dragon flies to do mosquito control.

I have seen no bats this year. Absolutely devastating! Sad

ModernDayBetty 7/29/2011, 6:17 pm

NHGardener wrote:I didn't know carrots came in all those colors! Seriously?

Fun Fact: Purple is the first original carrot color and has the highest vitamin content!

.... We had a farm expo at our elementary schools this last school year, it was one of several fun facts :o)

boffer 7/29/2011, 6:38 pm

Everything you wanted to know about carrots:

http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/today.html#colour

UnderTheBlackWalnut 7/29/2011, 6:52 pm

NHGardener wrote:I dunno. I'm thinking maybe just growing the tomatoes in pots next summer on the deck, further apart from each other, easier to inspect, less easy for the 'pillars to move from one plant to the next...

NHG - The only tomato where I saw significant hornworm damage so far WAS in a pot right next to my deck. It was near two other potted tomatoes and when I saw the damage I expelled it to the farthest corner of my driveway away from anything. Smile

Luckily the other two and my four that are in SFG box didn't seem to show any further damage. I, too, was thinking "How did a mouse get up my tomato plant?" Once I figured out the problem (thank you SFG forum members Smile

) I knew what to watch for and crazily enough, that plant which was eaten to the stems is actually coming back sitting on the far corner of the driveway in the shade...who'd'a'thunk? thinking

NHGardener 7/29/2011, 8:35 pm

UnderTheBlackWalnut wrote:I, too, was thinking "How did a mouse get up my tomato plant?"

Too funny! Glad I'm not the only one who thought that. Ha.

And about the carrot museum - well, I'll be. And here I thought carrots came in one color - orange. Looks like each color has its own nutritional values, wow. It would be fun to plant a rainbow carrot garden.

Edit: The carrot museum's webpage talks about Queen Anne's lace being a wild carrot, which is interesting because we were finding all these carrot-like plants around, with skinny little almost carroty looking things that smelled like carrots, and now I realize, as they're starting to bloom into wild Queen Anne's lace, that they really are carrots!

One other edit is that the webpage also states:

Vegetables grown decades ago were much richer in vitamins and minerals than the varieties most of us get today. The main culprit in this disturbing nutritional trend is soil depletion: Modern intensive agricultural methods have stripped increasing amounts of nutrients from the soil in which the food we eat grows. Sadly, each successive generation of fast-growing, pest-resistant carrot is truly less good for you than the one before.

I don't imagine that is the case with our nutritional soil mix? Unless the seeds themselves produce less nutritional carrots?

NHGardener 8/1/2011, 8:38 am

I pulled 2 off yesterday, and one this morning.

That brings the total, on 8 tomato plants, to 18-19 hornworms in four or 5 days.

This is maddening. I'm sure this has cut my tomato production way down.

I don't want to use pesticides, but is there any other natural way to control these? None of mine have been visited by the parasitic wasp, so I guess that's out.

I keep a pair of scissors right there at the tomato bed now to just clip these little suckers into two.

**camprn** 8/1/2011, 8:54 am

NHG Take heart, you are almost to the other side of the Hornworm's lifecycle and this process will stop soon. I would guess that your production is not down nearly as much as you imagine, from the hornworm at least. hang in there!

NHGardener 8/1/2011, 9:48 am

camprn - thanks for the encouragement, I'm glad to know the lifecycle is almost over. (I guess that means they only hatch until mid-summer?)

The camouflage (wow, that was a hard word to spell) on those things is amazing.

If I hadn't posted my note wondering what kind of mole was getting up my tomato plants, they'd all be stubs by now... so grateful for this group!

Denese 8/1/2011, 1:06 pm

Achh! I found my first one this morning! Evil or Very Mad

He was a chunker,a little over 2 inches. affraid

Probably because he'd almost finished off a pepper plant. At least he left the peppers. I looked and looked and couldn't find anymore. :scratch: I know better, though. Will go back out this afternoon and look some more.

NHGardener 8/1/2011, 1:15 pm

I was hoping the pepper plant eating thing was just a myth. Better go check mine once again. Fortunately, the peppers, eggplants and tomatoes are all in different boxes.

Where there's one hornworm there's probably 10, so be forewarned. You'll now spend a good deal of your free time playing "Find the hidden picture". haha.

Denese 8/1/2011, 2:30 pm

NHGardener wrote:

Where there's one hornworm there's probably 10, so be forewarned. You'll now spend a good deal of your free time playing "Find the hidden
picture". haha.

Yes, I expect there will be many more. They almost completely decimated my tomato plants one year. I had been gone for a few days, and I returned to tomato stems. Sad

Again, at least they left the toms. Smile

memart1 7/21/2012, 3:19 pm

I was out looking at my tomatoes and saw three places where there was a hornworm covered with white rice-like "eggs". I clipped off the area and smooshed the offenders. Then I came in and looked up hornworm images. I discovered I should have left them alone. The white "eggs" were really wasp larva that had killed the hornworm and were living off its body. They were the larva of a good parasitic wasp that lays its eggs just under the skin of the hornworm. So just because it looks ugly, it may not be bad !!

memart1 7/21/2012, 5:14 pm

Camprn -- Thanks for moving my post to the proper place,

I found a picture of a hornworm that looks just like what I saw.
Tomato Horn Worm ? ID - Page 2 Tomato10

If you see one like this, just let it be. It is dying, and the white things are larva of a good predator wasp.

twodaend 7/28/2012, 1:51 pm

I just picked this big boy off my tomato plant and dropped in a cup of soapy water.

Tomato Horn Worm ? ID - Page 2 Dsc02110

**llama momma** 7/28/2012, 3:17 pm

I add them to the bird feeder. Starlings and grackles hang around the backyard along with the smaller birds in the morning, I don't know if they both eat horn worms but someone is disposing of these treats very quickly, even the biggest 2 inch + horn worms. Might as well assist nature.

Triciasgarden 7/29/2012, 2:15 am

Good job all of you catching those bad guys! Great pictures also! On some of the descriptions of getting rid of the horn worm, I shivered. I remember when I was a teenager when I lived in So. California and we had one on the tomato plants. I knew I had to get him off but really didn't want to touch him. I don't remember what I did with him after. I guess it's selective memory, erase the bad, lol! But ewwwww seriously!!! Good thing I am not quite so squeamish.

Weedless_ 7/29/2012, 10:32 pm

Jeez, I've been battling them for a week now. I found one last Sunday, and it was a godzilla size. When I saw it (it was my very first in-person encounter), I freaked like a 5-year-old. I think my blood pressure went up more than a few points. I didn't even attempt to touch it. I just clipped the entire branch off and threw it in the compost and turned it a few times to give it a good warm mud bath. My husband, who never helps in the garden (other than compost unloading from the truck), came out with me and clipped a few of these. He tried to pry one off the branch but no luck. We clipped a few more off and put in the soapy water and then composted. Within a few more days I found 1-2 per day. One day nothing at all and no new damage. I thought I was done. This morning I find one staring right into my face from the tomato branch. Fat one! How do they manage to grow so big over night I have no idea. My tomatoes are still alive, but we lost a bunch of foliage and a couple of green tomatoes.

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Tomato Horn Worm ? ID