Ah, back in the Prairie where the hornworm thrives. After trying to grow tomatoes in the greenhouse where the whiteflies were as thick as thieves, I gave up. I tried every means of extermination and nothing worked. So this year I purchased two large planters with a water reservoir. Between the water reservoir and the rain, we had some nice tomatoes. Then came the hornworms.
Hornworms are much easier than whiteflies to dispose of and it can be done environmentally friendly. You simply place your thumb and pointer finger on the sides of the hornworm and pluck him off. He will grip the stem as if his life depends on it. A good yank will detach him from the tomato plant. You can then fling him out in the yard. Nick Hairston said the worms make good fish bait, so I carried one down to the pond and flung him in the water and waited. Shortly he sunk to the bottom.
For a fisherman, Sam can be a little squeamish. He can’t stand to touch a hornworm, which by the way, is actually a caterpillar. So Sam has been known to use pruning shears to cut them in two. Mostly I’m the one that rids the plants of the hornworms since I have a good eye for them.
The tomato hornworm is a bright green color, with some V shapes, that blends in with the plant. The hornworm has a horn, which I always thought was on its head like a unicorn, but as it turns out it’s on the back end.
Like most things the caterpillar starts as an egg. It then grows into a small worm, eats itself into oblivion and grows as long as 3 1/2 inches and kind of puffy looking.
After observing the caterpillar on the parsley that turned into a black swallowtail butterfly, I wondered what tomato hornworms turned into. The Internet said it turns into a sphinx moth, also referred to as a five-spotted hawk moth.
The way it does it is a little different than the caterpillar/swallowtail transformation. The hornworm eats as much of your tomato plant as it can in about three weeks. Then it falls off and burrows into the ground. If this happens in the summer, in a few weeks it will emerge as a moth. If it happens in early fall, it will stay in the ground until spring.
With that knowledge, I found a gallon size jar and filled it with 3 inches of soil. I put the hornworm in the jar with a handful of tomato leaves. The top was left open, as the Internet assured me the caterpillar could not climb out. Just as the instructions said, the hornworm disappeared and there in the soil was a hole the size of a pencil eraser. I covered the top of the jar with a cloth handkerchief and now we await the emergence of the five-spotted hawk moth/sphinx moth, which may not be until spring.
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