DON'T Kill These Tomato Hornworms!
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- Опубліковано 8 чер 2024
- I came home from vacation to find hornworms had destroyed my garden - but I didn't get rid of them! Find out why. #organicgardening #hornworm #organicpestcontrol
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Sorry for the lighting on this one guys. I could not win lol
You always win😊
To us in NC tobacco fields these are tobacco worms. Disposal, just dash them on the ground, however to "celebrate" the first one(s) found for the year we tossed them down the tractor exhaust...wait 2-4 seconds rev the engine high and watch the cooked worm get spit out end over end a few feet above the exhaust.
I think you’re being overly critical of yourself. The lighting seemed fine.
Didn’t notice
Hornworm hell I like it
Around 1967, I trained my pet hen to protect the garden by stalking through the garden and pouncing on parasites. She was separated at hatch from the others because they would peck her deformed foot, and she was taken in to live for three years with the cats and dog.
I had a hand raised Bard-rock years ago that I would release into the garden every afternoon for just such duties.
I have also seen ducks used successfully in gardens, to feast on garden pests. They don't hurt the plants. Plus the chicken / duck poop adds as fertilizer. Its just messy....
we have a hen that had the top half of her beak torn off by a rat, just at the nostrils...
so she needs a bucket of feed with at least 2 inches of feed so she can actually eat. sitting on the couch, 3 times a day, boooork bok bok bok... waltzes in the door, dogs learnt to ignore her but chase the others away... has a stack of books wedged into the opening so the dogs dont eat it. if she comes in and its closed... boooork bok bok... comes looking for someone to open it up...
@@paradiselost9946 unofficially, it's the "kitchen chicken" around my place!
Haha! 60 year old native Texas Redneck! I agree whole heatedly, they are creepy, and devistateing...
A lit ciggerett or cigar doles out some satisfaction, would you believe they spit as well, put a cigarette OUT! Sheeze, I find them hard to grab, (willies) but a pair of kitchen scissors does a great job!
Peace, and happy harvesting!
My grandfather always planted a Dill plant between each of his tomato plants he said that the Hornworms would go to the Dill first and that eating Dill made the Hornworms brighter and easier to spot!!! 🤠👍
We've always had problems with hornworms until 2 years ago. Someone told us to plant basil in with the tomato plants. Haven't had hornworms since.
I had a basil plant planted between two tomato plants. Unfortunately one of the plants still got a hornworm “infestation”.
Marigolds work too
FRost killed my marigolds, and the enormous basil bush did nothing to save my seven tomato plants, they were chewed down to the stems. Now, I have chickens....and the tide has turned for the hornworms. Mwa ha ha ha ha!
@@naomihatfield3015lol, you evil villain, you! In all seriousness, do the chickens do a good job of getting the bugs without destroying the crops? I am finally getting chickens and looking for info on how much to let them roam the garden. Thx!
@@corinne1691 do not give chicken free reign in the garden….their version of “gardening” is considerably more…inventive…than yours….and they enjoy many of the same vegetables that you do. I pull the hornworms off and feed them to the chickens….hornworms are high in calcium, and the birds love them.
Thanks. I learned a lot from this video. Spotting and removing those nasty hornworms as early as possible is key, but it’s easy to miss seeing them because they blend in so well with their surroundings. Did you know you can easily spot tomato hornworms by searching for them at night using a black light? The black light makes them glow in the dark! I just noticed several other commenters also recommended this. 🐛
😮
Gee, I didn't know about this! My tomatoes suffered greatly this summer from hornworms and I'm going to try this next year should I have the problem again. Thanks!
A tip for finding horn worms. Tomato hornworms will glow if you shine a black light on them.
I did not know this… must get a better UV flash light now!
@@user-ll3me5xh6s
Not UV...Black Light.
Yep. Works good. I hate hornworm
Absolutely works. You'll see all kinds of other crazy bugs too.
AWSOME TIP cause boy are they perfectly colored to blend right in with the tomato plants!!!
I'm not terribly crazy about the hornworms either, but the hawk moths are themselves important pollinators - though most species are principally nocturnal, and underappreciated for that reason. However, I often have a trail camera on my garden, and there is a LOT of nighttime activity of hawk moths. I also pick the hornworms off my tomatoes and introduce them to the deadly nightshade that grows in some of the weedier areas around the horses' pasture. They feed on THAT, and hopefully their offspring will decide nightshade is a better dinner menu item.
Genius. I actually have a lot of nightshade; I wish my other plants would reseed as readily. I love the idea of relocating my hornworms there.
My wife and I would go out after dark with a black light flashlight to find them. They glow bright green in the UV light and even the tiny ones are easy to find. We bought the flashlight off Amazon.
You can also use the black light to detect bodily fluids at a crime scene, at least they do on TV…
That's what I did when I spied one trimming back my tomatoes. Chickens loved the horn worms and u did initially make the mistake of feeding them the ones with the cocoons on them thinking it was hornworm eggs. Black light makes them glow up a neon green and easy to find and dispatch.
Years ago. I first attempted to grow tomatoes since they get expensive here in California. Around summer time, one of these horn worms somehow got inside the greenhouse and ate all the leaves from the only tomato plant that I was successfully growing. I managed to capture it (which was bigger than my thumb) as it was eating the last leaf on my now dead tomato plant. As revenge, I fed this now plump tomato worm to my red ear slider turtles and it looked like it was the best meal they ever had in years!
Tomatoes are expensive in California?? That’s news to me. I would have thought the opposite. Is it because they need so much water?
@@Emiliapocalypse Drought conditions and inflation contribute to the costs. If only it rained here more often.
The first time that I've ever seen a tomato hornworm was a few weeks ago, in my friend's garden, and it was covered in parasitic wasp cocoons. It never ceases to amaze me how nature works.
The first one I ever saw was covered with those cocoons too. I thought it was something out of a Lewis Carroll nightmare.
The hummingbird moths are just a slightly different species of hawk moth with a fluffy tail. They all hover majestically around flowers. Just some are more of a pest than others.
I feed them to my chickens
I don't know if this is common, but I recall my grandma teaching us to locate tomato horn worms by clicking two fingernails together. The horn worms would respond with a similar click and we could locate them by sound, sort of a homegrown fish finder for hornworms. It worked.
Your Grams was a master of the garden ..I've noticed that they do make a clicking sound when I've made my presence known after spotting them never thought to do that.. great tip
Yep, Liberty Toddler needs a nap. She’s getting so big. 😊
"A Flock of Hornworms" Kinda sounds like a new wave emo band name . Ha
lmao it does!
Or an Alfred Hitchcock film. Lol
Largest hornworms we ever had were on a globe willow tree in our yard. They were ridiculously huge, we found 11 of them and picked them off. Took them to a local nursery thinking maybe they were some weird subspecies. Garden center people freaked out, they had never seen or heard of any that size before.
Well fed. 🤣
I remember the one and only time I ever saw a humming bird moth. It was a delight to watch it fly around, impervious to my presence.
I'd rather enjoy the presence of a hummingbird moth than a garden tomato 😂
@@JaRule6Yeah, me too. But unfortunately, hook worms just turn into some huge ugly moth instead.
Bacillus thuringiensis works very well on hornworms and is completely non toxic to animals.
I had read that but couldn't find any locally. It was probably too late in the season
Hard to find locally but worth it. Had an outbreak of THWs in August, one application and none the rest of the season. It really works and only affects caterpillars.
Liberty Girl , buy plastic semi transparent sheets to cover your plants in place. Cattle panels help to make a strong structure to support your plastic sheets. You can increase the temp inside an open ended greenhouse by as much as 15 degrees but compost added to a closed ended greenhouse can easily maintain optimal growing temps all winter.
Awesome info, thanks!
I celebrate the horn worm wasps but rarely do they find the Ill fated horn worm before I do. But I have the luxury to be in my garden daily and usually spot the black droppings of the horn worm before it gets too far into destroying my tomatoes.
Thanks for another great informative episode.
Normally I catch them pretty fast too...though there was one that got past me a couple months ago that left the biggest mounds of caterpillar crap that I have ever seen
I forgot about the Tell, Tell, sign of horn worms is there elephant size loafs of poop!
They're not disgusting, they're interesting.
I pick them off and use em for fish bait.
As a grandfather of a 2 1/2 year old I know that sound the boss made. (But my grandson still won't nap. HAHAHA)
Everyone have a wonderful day.
I found a huge one on my tomato plant last night. It was treating my grown from seed plant like it was at Burger King. The squish it made under my shoe was so rewarding! I'm going to check my girls for more tonight.
Down south you might hear them called "baccer worms" since a close relative of the tomato hornworm eats tobacco plants (also a nightshade). We also have a pest down here called "bean leaf-rollers" which do about the same thing to beanstalks. My beans were destroyed since I listened to the organic gardening advice of not killing them! Took about five days for all the leaves to be eaten. They also eat kudzu, but seemingly have nowhere near the affinity for it that they have for garden variety legumes.
The tobacco horn work and tomato horn worm are almost identical aside from the stripes
Tobacco worms make good fishing bait. You cut em up in pieces and turn them inside out and put em on the hook, like you do catalpa worms. And like catalpa worms you can freeze them and use them later.
When I was a kid and teenager working in the tobacco field, we would catch the worms and give them to the old fella driving the tractor in the field. We'd catch him crickets too.
Maybe you can cut back on the bean roller damage by planting at a different time. Some bugs have a short period of time in which they are more prevalent. I used to grow a lot of cowpea/southern pea varieties and one year I tried planting some several weeks earlier than I did in the past. They grew fine but almost overnight they got attacked by the Mexican bean beetle. The plants looked like they'd been shot with birdshot. I planted more peas at the same time I'd been previously doing and had no problems. I found out later that the beetles had a certain time of the year that they were out, and that even though the weather was favorable to grow them, that's why no one planted them too early.
Basil, garlic and onions planted near your tomatoes will deter horn worms. I plant an onion bulb between my plants and never have hornworms.
Very well detailed explanation of hornworm life cycle. IPM, integrated pest management at it's finest. Thanks for the info
Did not know you had a homesteading channel, love it!
I did not make the connect until you just mention it. I was paying more attention to the garden and the kid.
Okay, for one thing, your child is absolutely adorable... and for another thing, thanks for the tip about the tomato hornworms... you have two awesome channels...
Yep, back when I gardened, I had a couple of those hornworms, and one of them had those white things on it. The hornworm was slower at that point. I had a feeling what was going on, mentioned it at work, and that's when I learned it was parasitic wasps. So, I got evil and and said to it, "DIE....die you tomato killer! YA-Haaaaaa-haaa!"
🤣👍
Good to know. We get those worms for sure, don’t remember seeing the cocoons but we’ll keep our eyes open.
Upon being let out in the summer and early fall, my ladies 🐔 inspect the garden for pests. I trained one hen years ago and she trained the other ladies who've trained other ladies and so on....
Last year I dealt with what I thought was a crazy amount of these guys I was sure they were Tomato Hornworms nope they were Tobacco Hornworms interesting plot twist. I love the new channel keep being extra Liberty Dollish. 🇺🇸
Also I was bitten by a Hawk Moth as a kid, fuck them. 😂
As someone who has dealt with those nasty things I can say I would remove them as soon as I saw them. Fortunately our family's tomato plants never got decimated like that.
I move them from my tomatoes to some wild grape plants nearby. They can munch the wild grapes all they want and still turn into the beautiful moths that I enjoy.
Leaving a tomato garden for a few weeks...
Hornworms: The salad bar is open. HOORAY!!! 🐛🐛🐛
My first and last garden I planted in the 1980s, I had beautiful tomato plants and those horn worms were prolific. I picked them off by hand and dropped them in a coffee can with some kerosene in it. Read somewhere to do that. As if they weren't disgusting enough they make "click" sounds at you when you grab them. I tried to have an organic garden and planted marigolds amongst the tomato plants (hornworm infestation), the squash plants (squash vine borer infestation). The pests were so bad they ATE my marigold plants too. 🤣
This is why people didn't travel much unless it was absolutely necessary, back when people still virtually completely depended on the yields of their labor/gardens and crops to survive.
Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) works great never had a problem and Bt proteins are allowed in organic farming I also use neem oil and neem oil and BT are also known to be effective way to control mosquitoes.
That was very interesting liberty doll and It was good to see baby liberty also with her curly hair.
We always called them Tomato worms and take the branch they are on along with them, put them in a jar and the kids have a new pet for a short time.. I've never seen or heard of the wasp thingy's but, now I'll keep an eye out for them.. THANKS L.D.!!!
I left for work, leaving two absolutely beautiful, full of blooms tomatoe plants. I came home 8 hours later, to two totally stripped bare to the stalks, tomato plants, because of two huge green worms. I was so upset I smashed them to a pulverized state with a brick. That was in 2008. I've never grown any more tomato plants since. Life took a turn, and it hasn't been possible to grow anymore veggies. Ugh...
Have not had a hornworm for three years. One pinch of chewing tobacco placed beside the tomato rootball. Finish filling the hole. It really works.
You never let them live. They will over winter as a cocoon and start the cycle all over again.
Sorry about your tomatos. Good luck with the rescue. A little FYI, Hawk moths and hummingbird moths are the same thing. What people call a hawk moth in one place call it a humming bird moth some place else. Other places sphinx moth.What ever you call it they don't belong in your garden! 😖
vise grips and a blow torch was always a good method.
Haha I'll have to get some
Plant a few sunflowers around your tomatoes. Birds love them,and they love tomato worms too.
This will work!
No hornworms this year. Last year I had a world record of 14 on one plant on my deck. 🤮 I got over stomping on them. My rule is, if you have one, you probably have more. Try leaving the plants to finish ripening the fruits. I saw one video suggesting that the worms glow under black light. I was excited and prepared to try that. Not disappointed that the opportunity didn’t surface.
I've heard that too, and thought about trying to do a video on it, but had no idea how to record in the dark lol
@@libertyhomestead Just wear your red white polka-dot apron and a white bow in your hair. We'll know it's you. That's all we need to see.
Tomato worms are so gross! Seeing them, picking them off, stomping on them, seeing their Vulcan green blood! Just do a YT short video IF it works.
My dad, a real green thumb, used to start dozens of tomato plants in our rich Illinois soil (Illinois USED to be good for something), and, of course, we would get tomato hornworms with, yes, that little horn, and the perfect green camoflage. They were easy enough to pick off and toss in the dirt, where one could squish them or just let the birds find them. Never knew how they got so big to begin with. I was once yold they would become Monarch butterflies, but, were that so (quite happily not so), I'd happily do without the butterflies to do without the hornworms.
Hamas worms?
Those worms are also know as tobacco worms and as a former tobacco farmer and she is right about the wasp but if they don't have that on them kill those MF things when they get to about 4to5 inches long they go underground and become the thing she showed trust her and if you are a fisherman they are good to catch catfish with
I killed a few dozen of those hornworms from my 7 tomatillo plants last summer. We used a black light (flashlight) to locate them at night, where these worms' stripes & spots glow brightly. Pulled them off with pliers, tossed them into a bucket of water to drown them. They absolutely ruined my crop in a matter of a couple of days.
This year, we didn't find a single hornworm. We ended up with about 100 tomatillo fruits, even after the squirrels, ants, and other critters took their bounty.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
The answer is keeping mint near the nightshade plant you want to keep. The flowers attract the parasitic wasp. It has worked for me for years. Easy.
The best way to control these are with BT. (Bacillus Thuringiensis) You just spray your plants at the first sign and they will be gone before they do any more damage. And BT lasts just about forever on the bottle. I've got a spray bottle 15 years old and it's still an active brew.
I looked it up, very interesting. Thank you so much for the info.
Also the humming bird hawk moth is the adult of these worms. Search for Macroglossum stellatarum@@corinne1691
Such wholesome content! 🤗
As the others here-in have all left testimonials I too have come along the same path to enlightenment. Thanks tender woman.
I've never had a huge problem with them. But they are short timers on this earth when I find them.
I feel for you Ms. LD. It is incredible how much those hornworms can destroy in just one day and the little buggers blend in so well. Every evening, I use to go through each plant to find the little "eating machines".... and finally realized they really wanted to fly out into the street where they play dodgeball with cars. I think they love the adventure. Can you tell how much I understand how you feel? I have tried marigolds all through the garden.... couldn't really tell how effective they were though.
My experience with marigolds is that they become magnets for the slugs ..... and are defoliated faster than the hornworms are doing the tomatoes!
I’ve heard hornworms love dodgeball! Can’t wait to let mine play too!
@@corinne1691 Funny, I've heard the same thing.... as long as the ball is solid like a rock... they like the challenge and excitement. ; )
Yeah we had those on our plants and we set them out on the table and the birds came and got them they were gone within a matter of 20 minutes😮❤😂
Interesting and good to know of the parasitic wasp, finally an ally to rid us of the dreaded, ugly Tomatoe hornworm! 🙂👍
My preferred ally against horn worms is BT (Bacillus thuringiensis). All I see are tiny dead hornworms in my pepper and eggplant beds.
I found one of these dead on my front porch and I couldn't help but think what an amazing creature...
Thank you for sharing this information. We always picked off and destroyed this worm.
I left for 4 days and I lost most of my tomatoes to hornworms this year😢
I collect them off my tomato and pepper plants and throw them into my pond for the fish to eat, easy disposal without the gross mess.
Thanks for the information on the tomato horn worm, I'll be looking at them in a whole new way from now on.
I think it helps to start the cuttings in water. I add a little rooting hormone. When the roots form you'll know where they are forming. Then into cups. Just finding my way on tomato cuttings. Hope you get them up in time.
One year I was sick and blew off my peppers and tomatoes. We are in Arizona so, a little bit of cover and they do well year round outside. Well, I just moved them to another part of the yard, fed my plants and by October, I had the most plentiful harvest ever. After that, the plats that were stripped were the most productive by a wide margin. Since then, I just let them be 🤷🏼♀.
Sorry for your plant loss though.. that is harsh
❤Thank you. You taught me something I at 68 did not know. Kudos.❤
Very cool! I didn’t know this. Thanks!
Thanks for the advice & science lesson.. 😊😊
I never had Horn Worm here in Phoenix, and my tomatoes are generally OK, while in season (basically early spring and fall), but Aphids are the Bane of my existence, and they destroy all of my brassicas every year. This fall I planted lavender in-line with all my brassicas and have pots of mums to try to control them. fingers crossed. I also have DE I can spread if that doesn't work.
Cut back on the nitrogen; it's why there's an aphid problem. Over fertilizing can be just as detrimental as under fertilizing.
And use soapy water to spray the aphids on your plants. Do it as a preventive, especially at seasonal temperature changes. (Spring and Fall)
Aphids are not much affected by inter-planting commonly believed insect control companion plants, except that they serve to use up the excess nitrogen in the soil. Next year, get yourself some Praying Mantis. They are workhorses in the garden at keeping insect population under control.
Just make sure after a morning in the garden to check your clothing; those guys like to hitch rides into the house where they will not survive without food.😂
I have not found a hornworm on my tomoatoes in quite a few years and I am not sure why. But i will say that it started when I planted really hot chiles nearby. Cayenne, serrano, habanero, etc.
And I now know that Bearded Dragon Chow is also Parasitic Wasp bug-juice du jour. Thanks! That was fun and informative.
1) you can use a black light to spot them easy at night. During the day they’re camouflaged into the plant
2) I threw about 20 into the pond , fish wouldn’t eat them, strangely enough they float
3) my research said they’re poisonous so I wouldn’t feed them to chickens. I discovered this after I threw into pond
Great info. Thanks
Sorry for your garden hopefully you can save something and Thank you for the information I’ve been plucking worms off my plants too
I had hand surgery After hornworm season, it also rained finally, and when I got back to the garden, there were leaves, blooms and now many little tomatoes! I am going to dig one beauty up and put on porch. The leaved branches can be laid in water and rooted also.
Thanks for this info
Thanks DOLL
Good information. Thank you for the video. 👍🏼
You had me going there for a while...LOL 😋 Good luck with transplanting.
Using a black light when it starts to get dark will light those little critters up. Makes them easy to find.
Excellent video, thank you,
Thank you for clearing up myths
Thanks for the video.
Good information. Thanks.
I showed my wife a huge hornworm in our garden once and she said that if she was picking tomatoes and touched a hornworm she'd have to cut her arm off.
Good info Thanks!
I love hawk moths...
Hornworms also attack tobacco. One hornworm can ruin a dozen big, beautiful, valuable cigar wrapper leaves. They even attack the leaves after harvest, while hanging to color cure in the barn. It's absolutely heartbreaking to see gaping holes chewed in one leaf after the next. For filler leaf it is not the end of the world, but binder and wrapper leaf must be intact or it is useless.
The backwards jeans apron/tool belt is a genius idea. I’m definitely making one!
I love it! Was a gift from our neighbors
My tomatillos were decimated by horned worms… but the Tomatillos came back on their own and started producing fruit again(inNH).
I NEVER KNEW THAT ! AND I KNOW EVERYTHING,,,THANKS !
Ha! Nice. I've always seen the hornworms in the garden growing up (haven't had a big enough garden to matter yet as an adult) but have never seen one with the predator cocoons. Very nice & informative video.
Great information!
Awesome info!
Not so we have pupated hornworm caterpillar‘s that we picked off of our plants and they turned into giant stripy, pink and gray moths that were absolutely stunning, watching them come out, crawling up their stick hanging upside down is their enormous wings, a engorge, and then conceal them selves with perfect camouflage on the twig into the following night when you can see it gloriously flap away.
Nostalgia. When I was a kid -- 70-years ago -- my dad shot the hornworms off his tomatoes with a bb gun.
One day, as I leaned down to cchevk my tomatoes, all I could hear was a LOUD crunching noise. 5 giagantic hornworms, muching like no tomorrow.
I cut off the leaflet and knocked the wirm off onto my super hot ceramic BBQ island. It had to ve 120+ degrees.
You don't need to say they died.
After that, when I planted them I zi created cages using small PVC pipes and fittings screening that large moths couldn’t get through
Tomatoes are self polluting and so don't necessarily need bees.
Interesting. Thanks.
I had hornworms, but I also have wasps. I created a partial native planting and it has brought me a ton of predatory insects and birds. What the wasps didn't get, the birds did.