... for a friend.

Our county extension educator grows tomatoes exclusively to generate hornworms for feed to a creature she raises that I missed. Only she never gets hornworms, and doesn't even like to eat tomatoes. What a problem to have!

Are there any varieties you have noticed that particularly call out to hornworms? Anything grown nearby that may be an attractant?

As I remember, in my climate the hornworms appear mid-late season. When do your hornworms appear? Weather conditions play a role?
Please talk hornworms for someone else's project!

- Lisa

Tell her to look online for "hornworm eggs for sale".

Seems like hornworms on the plants appear near the end of the month of May here. We normally get the tobacco hornworm vs. the tomato hornworm. They look very similar and eat the same things. Tobacco hornworms like pepper plants in my garden every bit as much as tomato plants. They’ll get on eggplant also.

I pick the larva off and feed the fish with them. Catfish go nuts for hornworms. I spray Bt on the foliage once the caterpillars appear and that takes care of the issue for a while. Finding a trail of frass is generally the first thing I spot before seeing the worms. Or I might see a tomato branch with missing leaves. The worms will eat young green tomatoes and peppers, the fruit itself, and not just foliage.

The larva grow extremely fast. In a few days, they will be horrible monsters of tomato and pepper destruction. Every once in a while, one or two may escape my detection and will virtually destroy a plant in hours. Hornworm seem to be harder to spot on the pepper plants.

http://insectnet.com/ Is a fabulous site. You can buy and trade all kinds of insects and their eggs/ova. I used this site often while raising kids.

karstopography wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 9:43 pm Seems like hornworms on the plants appear near the end of the month of May here. We normally get the tobacco hornworm vs. the tomato hornworm. They look very similar and eat the same things. Tobacco hornworms like pepper plants in my garden every bit as much as tomato plants. They’ll get on eggplant also.

I pick the larva off and feed the fish with them. Catfish go nuts for hornworms. I spray Bt on the foliage once the caterpillars appear and that takes care of the issue for a while. Finding a trail of frass is generally the first thing I spot before seeing the worms. Or I might see a tomato branch with missing leaves. The worms will eat young green tomatoes and peppers, the fruit itself, and not just foliage.

The larva grow extremely fast. In a few days, they will be horrible monsters of tomato and pepper destruction. Every once in a while, one or two may escape my detection and will virtually destroy a plant in hours. Hornworm seem to be harder to spot on the pepper plants.

Tie a giant wooly bugger in a hornworm pattern and start casting.

I only see a few year, some years, none. And they almost always have the braconid wasp eggs on them already, at least by the time I see them. They are usually late here, I don't think I've ever seen them before tomatoes are being eaten. I usually see the hornworm with the white egss on it before I notice any damage.

What needs to be fed - "a creature she raises that I missed"?

they usually appear here around 7/20 or so at which time i apply BT and 1 other time in a week or so as suggested and never see another one for the season...........
Pete

JRinPA wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 10:46 pm What needs to be fed - "a creature she raises that I missed"?

That ^^

Pentas attract a different kind of hornworm.

Maybe she can raise pentas instead since she’s not into tomatoes.
https://www.insectidentification.org/in ... phinx-Moth
Tersa Sphinx moths range far north so maybe tell her to plant a bunch of Pentas.

Hornworms are truly beautiful caterpillars. If only they weren't so destructive of the plants we put so much work into.

They also love tobacco. So, could try growing some of that? Although, I have no idea if that makes them toxic or not?

She mentioned raising a reptile, lizard maybe? During the zoom, someone said tarantula, but my mind had turned back to tomatoes. She works and has an advanced degree in a biology field so has studied many bugs and insects. Hornworms must sense their fate and skip her house .

- Lisa

Since this is sort of a relaxed off season hornworm convention....anyone know what this thing was? It crawled on me, first day of duck (early Oct.) a few years back. It is a real boggy marsh. It was as big as a hornworm, about 3" I'd say, and had a sort of horn on one end. I don't know which way it was crawling, I stripped that jacket off so fast you'd think it kissed me.

Some sort of moth caterpillar as they all are.

It is a sphinx moth. It is a bit discolored so it is probably just before a molt before it's final instar. Here is a page where you can see if you can decide which species it is. https://www.sphingidae.us/eastern-ecoregion-key.html

I don't know why the dog pic is there, he is not a bug (well he is a bugger) but it was marked bug I guess. From the same day.

I can't find anything like that bug on internet pics...the shape/size, maybe luna moth, excepting the horn, so likely a sphinx moth of some kind, but totally different color. I have checked so many colorful moths, only to backtrail them to boring plain green or brown worms. So I figure this bright worm probably turns into a mottled, light gray moth!

I remember not wanting to hurt it, I moved it from our trample zone. But the pics came out so blurry, it is a shame. Foggy lens. I haven't seen one since. I never see many bugs there to speak of, since it is usually frost there by October when I head up. It is an old ice pond, I think, about 4-5 ft deep to a hard bottom, but only 6-12" of clear water on top, with 3-4 ft of soft muck and hundred year old tree stumps to fall over. Full of turtles, amphibians, and small fish, but not much duck food except bur-reed. I don't know what a caterpillar that size would be eating up there - there aren't that many leaves. Maybe he was an outlier, and two months earlier it is more leafy. There is some coarse brush that has small, deep red. Maybe it gets the color from that. But certainly not lush tomato or tobacco plants in crop field.

Which leads to a thought I've had before - we, people, named those bugs for what we cultivate in monoculture. We make big vibrant plants in spots and pave everything else. These ancient, evolved moths have adapted to lay eggs on for easy food source for their young. We call them tobacco, tomato hornworms, corn borers, squash vine borers, etc. If we go back 400 years, before the land was cultivated, where would be finding them? On what plants? If you find that out @greenthumbomaha then maybe you can find some hornworms around there. I've never been through Nebraska. PA has a good bit of somewhat protected, public woodlands to scout around in, that haven't seen much of the plow; luckily we had a governor way back when who was a forestry guy that got the timbering under control and conserved land.

MissS wrote: ↑Thu Mar 24, 2022 3:07 pm It is a sphinx moth. It is a bit discolored so it is probably just before a molt before it's final instar. Here is a page where you can see if you can decide which species it is. https://www.sphingidae.us/eastern-ecoregion-key.html

Okay, we cross posted, I agree, hornworm/sphinx moth. I will check out that website.

That is a great flow chart...thank you so much.
More colorful than I expected...beautiful depth of color.
They must be eating the blueberries, or a reasonable facsimile. It is that type of terrain, two steps forward, the next you are doing a split since your leg sunk 3 ft. Though I can't say that particular spot has many blueberries. I know places within a 10-20 miles from there that have a lot more blueberries, and places with cranberries. Maybe it is worth a camping trip with a UV light.

Thinking about this, the places I know with blueberries, I visit during the summer, latest being August, for canoe fishing. I have only been to the bug spot a scant few times before October. So maybe some of the brush I'm thinking of are blueberry bushes that already dropped.. They are just little tiny, seedy things up there.
Common names: Huckleberry Sphinx

https://www.sphingidae.us/paonias-astylus.html

Another sizable and common sphinx moth is P. Modesta which feeds on poplar trees. They should be easy to find from late July onwards.

I hate search engines. P modesta gets some really weird image returns. But then I searched that sphinx moth page alone and see that p modesta. I can't say I've seen that one. The ones we see around here, when at rest, look just like a pair of maple spinners.

My mom tells me that, as a kid, she had an aunt/uncle with a year round log cabin and some land up that way (in the poconos), and used to go up there in the summer when the huckleberries were ripe. It seems they must have had nice stands of them on dryish land, and certainly not the poor fare I have seen from canoe in late August. She says she doesn't remember any big worms like that, just big bears! She says the bears would come to eat the huckleberries ( we have big black bears in PA, we may still have the record size, it was 800+lb a few years back) and when they got close, the adults would say it was "time to let the bears have some".

I think it would be pretty neat to plant some blueberries at the comm garden, then catch some of these yellow-red hornworms and bring them down. I imagine the next month I'd see a lot more beautiful, bright horn worms...all over everyone's tomatoes...