Tomato Hornworms
What are Tomato Hornworms? One day you are looking at healthy tomato plants, the next morning they’ve been disseminated to a mere collection of leafless stems. You search your tomato plant only to find a caterpillar that, if photographed at point-blank range, resembles something from an old Godzilla movie. You have just been invaded by Tomato Hornworms, a green caterpillar that has a voracious appetite, making short work of your tomatoes (potatoes, peppers, and eggplant), and grows to be five inches long and about as big around as your thumb. These giant caterpillars are the larvae of hawk or sphinx moths. Once they get enough to eat, the worms drops to the ground and burrows down a few inches to where the cycle begins again. The first indication that you’ve been invaded is when the leaves of the plants come up missing, often those located at the tips of the branches. By following the trail of frass, or caterpillar excrement, you can find them camouflaging themselves along a