Aaron Baugher writes:

Aaron "Lisa" writes:
Hey all -- was gone for the weekend and went to take a look at the
garden yesterday (which up until this weekend was doing A-OK).
Well, my beautiful tomato plants were all branches and limbs. No
leaves. No tomatoes. Got to looking closely to see what the heck
happened to my plants and there were horrible green horned
caterpillars. Looked them up and discovered they were hornworms.
Some of the biggest, fattest, ugliest caterpillars I have ever seen.
Peeled off and destroyed as many as we could find and then sprayed
herbicidal soap on what was left. Are my plants ruined? Am I done
for the season? Or will they come back and produce?

Aaron It's hard to say. The branches that were eaten back probably won't
Aaron grow again, but tomato plants usually have a lot more foliage than
Aaron they need, especially if you don't prune them like some people do.
Aaron I've seen some very shorn tomato plants produce quite a few tomatoes.

Aaron The best defense against tomato worms is to check your plants every
Aaron day. The worms themselves can be hard to spot, but the damage usually
Aaron stands out quickly. Also, if you happen to see a worm with a bunch of
Aaron white things sticking out from his body, those are the eggs of some
Aaron sort of wasp. Don't kill that worm; the eggs will hatch soon and the
Aaron wasp larvae will eat the worm, which is the sort of thing you want to
Aaron encourage.

I have found Bt very effective against all forms of
caterpillars. The hornworms are very hard to find in
18 large plants, and usually I only find them by looking
for extensive damage.

I encountered my first hornworms when growing tomatoes in
pots on a 17th floor balcony in NYC.



--
Andrew Hall
(Now reading Usenet in rec.gardens.edible...)