Just spotted a half inch hornworm dead on the black plastic mulch in the tomato garden. What a shock! As I looked for frass on the ground, I found some, and another dead hornworm of the same vintage. They looked petrified and I suspect that they died of disease. The frass indicated a larger hornworm out there, and a search turned up an older, bigger creature, alive and chomping on KARMA Miracle. I pulled it off and gave it to the chickens. I hope there are no more!

Linda

Oh geesh, that reminds me that the bT I ordered came yesterday and we need to get spraying sooner rather than later!

I'd need a tanker truck of BT to treat my tomato jungle, but I've been out checking, and pulled another 3 x 1" long hornworms off KARMA Miracle and Lucky Tiger. The chickens hope I find more......

Linda

Ugh. I found my first hornworm of the season on July 29. I picked 16 off that day and 18 the next day, most of them large. Since then I've found a total of 50 (including 1 on my potatoes and 1 on a pepper plant that was beside a tomato plant). Hopefully I got them all from the current batch since in the last few days I only found 1. I'll keep checking 3x a day to be sure new batches don't hatch.

I've been reading about using ultraviolet flashlight to find them at night. From what I read, a wavelength of 365nm works better than 395nm since it produces light that isn't visible to humans but when it hits hornworms (and certain other things) it makes them appear to glow. I'm probably going to order one in the next few days once I decide for sure on which brand to get because I'd rather catch them before they get big. It would be a good tool to have on hand.

Yikes WoodSprite! Glad you are keeping on top of things.

I think I will get an ultraviolet light. Do let me know if you find a good one!

Linda

i got a cheap black light flashlight i found at hobby lobby, i only have 11 plants, it worked just fine. it's not all that powerful but did make it easier to spot them, they did glow ----tom

encore wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 8:27 am i got a cheap black light flashlight i found at hobby lobby, i only have 11 plants, it worked just fine. it's not all that powerful but did make it easier to spot them, they did glow ----tom

If I did that I would see a thousand scorpions.

WoodSprite wrote: ↑Fri Aug 07, 2020 5:05 pm Ugh. I found my first hornworm of the season on July 29.

Oh shoot, I thought we were past hornworm time, maybe not.

Setec Astronomy wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 7:31 amOh shoot, I thought we were past hornworm time, maybe not.

I guess I spoke too soon, yesterday something caught my eye high up in one of my plants, turned out it was a hornworm, but it was covered with wasp pupa, so I figured it was a goner (it looked like it was hanging dead already). When I went back to take a closer look, I couldn't find it, although I did see the tell-tale damage of a late-instar hornworm, branches with the ends completely eaten off. I didn't see any others, but as we all know, they are hard to spot.

Good luck in the search Setec. My UV light arrived from Amazon. I was disappointed that it was only 2" long (perfect for a key chain). It's rather wimpy and doesn't light up a huge area. It illuminated a lot of flea beetle holes (which I thought were eggs), but didn't find any hornworms. Maybe I found them all.......

Linda