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August 9, 2011 by Tien Chiu 3 Comments

Tomato hornworm

B. and I have a little patio garden, and, as always, our single Sungold tomato plant devours the patio and churns out more cherry tomatoes than we can keep up with.  Today I was out picking the last week’s crop, and (while picking) noticed these ominous signs:

Caterpillar poop!
Caterpillar poop!

Oops!  Giant caterpillar poop (technically known as “frass”), about 3/16″ wide by 1/4″ long, near a tomato plant.  There’s only one thing it could be: the dreaded tomato hornworm, which can lay waste to a tomato garden in days.

I looked around the plant for quite awhile without seeing him.  Then I saw a caterpillar poop in the nearby pepper plant.  Aha!  There he was, Mr. Hornworm, sitting on a pepper branch and looking actually quite handsome:

tomato hornworm!
tomato hornworm!

We put him (or her? impossible to tell!) into a half-gallon mason jar, with some window screening on top.  B. (who thinks Mr. Hornworm is way cool) is going to take the caterpillar into work, and feed it tomato leaves until it pupates.  From its size, it should be pretty close to pupation; it’s already big enough to eat New York!

I must confess that, though hornworms are a tomato scourge, I have a soft spot for them: they are downright beautiful critters, and my ex and I bred them, long, long, ago, as chameleon chow.  (Crickets and mealworms = high-fat, high-chitin junk food.  Yummy caterpillars = good-quality, high-protein food.  Buy some for your chameleon today!)  So I’m glad B. is taking it to work – I would have felt bad about squishing him.  This way the hornworm can live, and as long as B. doesn’t release the resulting moth near our tomatoes, all will be well.  (Hopefully no one is trying to grow tomatoes in the industrial park where B. works!)

And, because they are so beautiful, a shot of the tomatoes themselves:

Sungold cherry tomatoes - my favorite kind!
Sungold cherry tomatoes - my favorite kind!

In weaving news, I’ve decided to continue winding on the 37-yard warp: it’s going to take me at least a week or two to write the article and design the samples, not to mention having to order the yarn, and I don’t want to delay that long.  I figure I can either use my table loom for the samples, or borrow/rent a loom for the occasion.

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Filed Under: All blog posts, food

Previous post: Chocolate designs
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Comments

  1. Sandra Rude says

    August 9, 2011 at 8:28 pm

    Yes, those are beautiful tomatoes! We’ve got some red cherry tomatoes starting to show color, and some full-sized tomatoes developing. The cukes are already going full swing, and the melons are swelling daily. Happy gardening!

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  2. terri says

    August 10, 2011 at 1:34 pm

    I love sungolds! They’re the only tomato I’ve successfully grown in the fog, although I think it would take 4 of 5 plants to produce what you get from one plant 🙂

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  3. Ann says

    August 11, 2011 at 6:30 am

    And the moths are quite handsome as well!

    Silkworm caterpillers make good lizard chow . . . .

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