Hornworms - no one wants to find these bad boys in their garden. Yesterday we spied two of them on a tomato plant just as we were heading into town. I vowed to remove them when I got back. When I got home, I grabbed my gloves and went out to the upside down tomatoes to yank the nasty fellows off the plant. To my surprise, the more I looked the more I found! These are tomato hornworms, hatched from eggs that were left by a hawkmoth - a very large moth - but not the Sphinx moth that visited us earlier. These caterpillars are very well camouflaged, so I kept going back to check the all the upsidedown tomatoes for more. And I found them - great big and itty bitty. I quit counting at 12... I decided to check the tomatoes that are growing upright in a raised bed as well and found a tiny bad boy that was just starting to munch on the backside of a leaf. So you can be sure that I will be patrolling the tomatoes in search of more and I am sure I will find them!
And yes, we had our first frost on Friday morning. We knew it was coming and covered things. Fortunately, it was a light frost - but certainly a harbinger of what is to come - maybe sooner versus later!
5 comments:
I hate those nasty hornworms. They make a terrible mess if you squish them. Frost? That's hard to believe. Isn't this early?
Linda - here in the high desert we could have freezing temperatures any day of the year - fortunately we don't get an early freeze too often. It is always a challenge to garden here!
And here I thought I had it bad with the first week in September. I don't think I could handle it that early.
You need chickens to eat those hornworms--LOL!
We had a BIG problem with those disgusting things last year. They can strip a tomato plant in 24 hours. Yuck!
No tomatoes this year so no hornworms. But on the other hand, I don't remember seeing any at the cabin in previous years. Maybe we are so far from other gardens that they just don't find us up there. - Margy
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