Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

[Bruce]

Lucky you to have those wasps for the nasty hornworms you don't spot! I pulled about 8 that size off the tomatoes last week. They grow fast. The chickens got them for a snack. I haven't seen others so maybe there was just one Sphinx moth traveling through.

In my memory I only have cooked one dish that was truly bad.

FINALLY Mike posts food that doesn't make me want to go down there and beg at the table!

 

[CntryBoy777]

Those horn worms make some really good fish bait....can be a bit messy getting it threaded on tho.....they also eat tobacco plants.....

 

[RollingAcres]

Hate those hornworms! Luckily I didn't see any this year. In the past I've pulled them and fed them to the chickens as well. Never tried using them as fish bait tho.

 

[greybeard]

Many may know what the pictures are of but in case some don't, if you see a Hornworm on your tomato plants that looks like the pictures, those are the eggs of a Braconid Wasp on the back of the destructive Hornworm that will eat the Hornworm from the inside out.

View attachment 51487

Not exactly. Not eggs, and they don't hatch out there and what comes out doesn't enter the worm. It's the other way around tho the belief that they are eggs, is a fairly common misconception often handed down from previous 'old folks' and probably from decades back. You will never see a Braconid wasp egg 99% of the time, unless you squash a horn caterpillar within a day or 2 of the wasp laying it's egg and peel the caterpillar's skin back carefully.

The Braconid wasps (there are several different wasps that do the same thing to different caterpillars) use an ovipositor to lay their little tiny wedge shaped eggs under the skin of the caterpillar. The eggs will hatch under the skin into very very small larvae, spend some time (a few days to a couple of weeks) eating the slimy green crap that is inside the worm, growing but never harming any of the caterpillar's vital organs.

The problem with relying solely on the wasps to get rid of the caterpillars is that they only prevent the caterpillar from completing it's own life cycle, and by the time the Braconid larvae have killed it or even stopped it from eating leaf matter, the caterpillar has usually already done an immense amount of damage to foliage. The larvae have to let the caterpillar live and continue to eat until right before they break out.

When you see the white things on a horn worm, you are seeing the mature wasp larvae that have chewed a hole in the skin of the worm and have come out of a horn worm and are now spinning or have spun up a cocoon.

Description: These wasps are common parasitoids of hornworm caterpillars that are often seen in home gardens. Adult females inject their eggs into hornworm caterpillars. The eggs soon hatch into grub-like larvae that feed a week or two on tissues inside the hornworm hosts. Their small size allows many larvae to be accommodated by each caterpillar. When they are done feeding, the larvae chew small holes in the skin of their host and squeeze through so they can spin silk cocoons and pupate attached to the outside of their still-living host. These cocoons are often mistaken for eggs. After this point the caterpillar feeds very little, and can be viewed as a nursery for these beneficial parasitoid wasps. Within about a week, the adult wasps emerge, and a day or two after that the caterpillar host dies.

There are other caterpillars that have the same thing happen to them. Here's a video of one:

Instead of looking for the horn worm on tomato plants, I look at the base of the plant on the ground. Little black or dark brown pills (hornworm feces) are the telltale sign you have the caterpillars. Only then, do I start looking for the worms or spraying/dusting for them.

 

[Bruce]

How very bizarre. Looks like we need to be vigilant and hunt those hornworms down when they are small.

 

[RollingAcres]

How very bizarre. Looks like we need to be vigilant and hunt those hornworms down when they are small.

The are very hard to find when they are small. That's why you do it the way @greybeard described above, look for the worm poop. I've learned that a couple of years ago those black stuff was worm poop.

 

[Baymule]

I have birds in my garden that look for them. I haven't had hornworm damage in several years.

 

[Bruce]

I know to look for the poop. Hadn't been out to the garden for days (busy digging the pond) and when I did they were HUGE! Not hard to see there was a problem, lots of leafless stem on the 2 plants. Haven't had them in the past here. The birds must have missed a moth.

 

[Mike CHS]

We use cotton burr compost as a mulch which is black so it's hard to see any eggs.

 

[greybeard]

The poop will also be very evident on the leaves. It gets caught in the area at the bottom of the leaf where the stem ends. When fresh, it's a little segmented barrel shape and usually the same color as their skin & guts, then only turns dark once it dries out.