Tag Archives: tomato hornworm

HORNWORMS!

hornworm damage

I have lots to share so I will be writing a lot in the next few days. I was on vacation for 7 days and am now back and busy harvesting and weeding. The first day back, I saw one of my Black Cherry tomato plants was overwhelmed by tomato hornworms. As you can see in the pic above, they ate all the leaves on the top 1/3 of the plant.  Interesting that they seem to like that variety but I only found 2 more on that tomato bed that has 9 tomato plants-all right next to each other. I can see why the hornworm would like the Black Cherry tomato as it is one of my favorites too! On all the other 29 tomato plants, I only found a couple of hornworms. We handpick the hornworms off wearing gloves because I’m squeamish about them.

hornworms

So I think we got around 100 hornworms in all different sizes on that one plant. Never had so many hornworms on one plant. Found and picked most of them off that day.

tomato-hornworm1

Then went back at night with my UV flashight and found about 50 more. The hornworms glow under  UV light making them easier to find-this helps find smaller ones too that I missed in the day. I got mine on Amazon. So keep a lookout for hornworms-they are around now!

Eldorado vegetable pest lecture

tomato hornworm revealed

Tomato Hornworm revealed-such a good camouflage artist!

Gave several garden lectures this week. The first lecture was on pests in the garden at this time of year out in the Eldorado Community Garden on Monday August 3. What a lovely garden! I hadn’t been out there for several years and it has expanded and is very beautiful right now (especially with all these rains).

There were lots of questions on gophers, squirrels, aphids, tomato hornworms, cabbage loopers, grasshoppers and other insect pests that are around now and organic control of them. We talked about all these pests and it’s amazing that any plants survive!

Attached are the handouts I gave out at the lecture:

CLass pests pics

ORGANIC INSECTICIDE CONTROLS

ORGANIC DISEASE CONTROLS

Here is some more info:

HOW TO CONTROL:

gophers–trap ’em. Sorry but it’s too hard to grow crops here anyways and to see an 18 yr old apple tree decimated from gophers is a travesty. Gophers are very territorial so you might not have as many as you think. Usually there are only between 2-4 gophers on a property.

squirrels-sprinkle fox urine granules around your garden (not coyote urine granules or human urine as one person asked)

aphids–AZAMAX-a new organic product available only at Newmans.  AzaMax is made from special Azadirachtin Technical extracted using patented extraction technology from the Neem tree but is not Neem oil.  The first week of Azamax applications will pretty much stop the reproduction of spider mites, aphids, or other pests.  You need to reapply Azamax to your plants every 7-14 days for a few times. Helps disrupt eating and mating.  You will then see dead aphids on your plants but they will not be eating them so you need to rinse off before eating your crops. Do not spray in middle of day when it’s hot as it can burn your plants. In fact, it’s good to spray this and Neem in the evening before dark. That way the plants won’t get burned and the bees have gone back to their hive (you don’t want a direct hit on bees) and by morning when it’s dry, it’s fine for bees to be around, just not when it’s wet. I can’t wait to try this on some kale that has them now. A landscaper friend who uses it in her gardens, showed me the dead aphids on her plum tree and it worked. Wish I had it back when the aphids were bad on the fruit trees earlier this year!

Tomato hornworms-handpick or if you have a heavy infestation, use Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis). Just call it Bt when you ask for it at the nurseries.  It wrecks havoc with their digestive system. Is harmless to all other animals but deadly for caterpillars.

Cabbage loopers-a caterpillar that eats greens, lettuce, cole crops, kale, etc. Use Bt for all caterpillar problems.

Grasshoppers-use NOLO Bait or Semaspore. Same thing, different manufacturers. The problem is most people wait till they are inundated with grasshoppers and then say NOLO bait doesn’t work. Not true. You just need to start much earlier in the season because it takes about 3 weeks+ for it to work and it is not as effective once the baby hopper grow up. Plus you need to refrigerate NOLO. If you have lots of adult grasshoppers now, put row cover over your crops to act as a physical barrier between the hopper and your plants. I noticed last year when I had hoppers that they were gone in 3 weeks and I heard they won’t be as bad the next year as they did not lay eggs and this must be true as I’ve only seen one or two this year. Not harmful to other animals, bees, mammals or birds.

Tomato hornworms are here!

Sphinx larva-tomato hornworm

Well I knew it would be too good to be true! The tomato hornworms are here-late but here. Picked off about 15 today that were found on the tomato plants. Boy are they hard to see. Great camouflage artists. I haven’t been in the garden much this past week due to a lot of art events around the SOFA show that just ended here in Santa Fe. As a result, three of us-Caleb, Elodie and myself found about 15 hornworms on the tomato plants. The hornworm is the larva of the Sphinx moth (also called the hummingbird moth but not related to hummingbirds). I was hoping that maybe they wouldn’t show up but they’re here! They can be seen in the top of the plants, not deep in the interior, thank god, where I wouldn’t be able to find them and they are almost inevitably always found hanging upside down on the branch they are munching on. When I find them, I pick them off  (wearing gloves) and under my shoe they go! I think their instant death is better then giving them to the chickens who would peck them to a tortuous death. I do try to be humane in their demise! They aren’t hard to control by handpicking, it just takes a little time. Glad one never finds more than one or two in each plant. So tomorrow and everyday this week I will go hornworm hunting until I can’t find anymore..

Where are the tomato hormworms?

tomato hornworm revealed

I haven’t seen any tomato hornworms yet which I think is unusual for this time of year. I looked up in my blog posts from last year to see when the tomato hormworm showed up- they appeared on July 8th. And come to think of it, I haven’t seen any Hummingbird moths or Sphnix moths either yet. Maybe the -20°F weather we had last winter killed the larvae! We’ll see.

Can you find the tomato hornworm?

tomato hornworm hiding

Found another tomato hornworm this evening and I got 2 really great shots of it before it’s funeral. Can you find it in the picture above?

Here is a close up of it. They really are hidden aren’t they? That’s why they are so hard to find!

tomato hornworm revealed

tomato hornworm attack!

tomato hornworm courtesey of W.S. Crenshaw/Colorado State University

I’ve found some tomato hornworms in the garden this morning. I picked them off and gave them to the chickens. Here is some information about them. This pale green caterpillar has white and black markings, is 3 1/2 to 4 inch long and is the larval stage of the Sphinx moth.

sphinx moth courtesey of W.S. Crenshaw/Colorado State University

It is also called the hawk moth or hummingbird moth.  It is called the hummingbird moth because of it’s long “beak” which is not really a beak at all, but a slender, tubular feeding and sucking organ. It is not a hummingbird but an insect. It is a grayish-colored moth with a wing spread of 4 to 5 inches. I see it visiting my flowers at dusk and at night. It is attracted particularly to purple flowering plants. The moth is not harmful to your plants only as the larva caterpillar-the tomato hornworm. A friend of mine called me to say her plants were being visited by the Monarch Butterfly and wanted to know if they would hurt her tomatoes. The answer is no, the Monarch Butterfly lays it eggs on milkweed and when it is a caterpillar feeds on milkweed and feeds on nectar from other plants when it is an adult.

I noticed a couple of things about the hornworm today. First I got out early and caught it sleeping. At least I think it was sleeping as it didn’t move for a long time and it was still really chilly outside (I thought maybe it needed warmth to get up and going or perhaps it had a hangover from eating so many tomato leaves!). The first thing I do after looking to see if the plants look good (as in no disease showing up) is to see if any of the leaves are eaten. The hornworm usually start feeding from the highest part of the plant first. If I see that, then I also look for their poop (called frass) which are quite large pellets about 1/8 inch in size. You can see it sometimes on the branch or on the ground. The hornworms are hard to see as they blend in so well with the foliage but keep looking around the damaged areas and you will find them. Anyways the 3 times I’ve seen them so far this year, they all hang upside down on the tomato branch-so look for them that way. I don’t like to handle them with my bare hands. I usually have gardening gloves on so I’m not so squeamish about picking them off. They are so large they give me the creeps but they are quite beautiful. I will have to do more inspections to catch them.

I luckily haven’t had huge amounts of them so I prefer handpicking them but if I found I had tons of them, I would spray with Bt for caterpillars. Bt is short for Bacillus thuringiensis. It is a live bacteria that kills caterpillars only. It doesn’t harm bees, or birds or humans-only caterpillars. It is perfectly safe for organic growers. When the caterpillar takes a bite of your leaf, it dies. It interferes with their digestive system. You can buy it at a nursery. Usually the big box stores don’t carry it. The only bad thing about Bt, is that is washes off with the rain and must be reapplied.

hornworm with wasp cocoons

The other thing that is helpful comes from nature itself.  If you see little white cocoon things on the hornworm, leave them alone as a helpful parasitic wasp has layed their eggs on them and the caterpillar will soon die. An added bonus is all the little wasps will attack other hornworm caterpillars. The wasp is not like the wasp we think of that stings us. It is a little thing, almost fly like, doesn’t sting us and is one of those beneficial bugs you would like to have in your garden.