Hornworms Begone

Ew, what are these tiny little grenades? Deer droppings? Too small. Rabbit? Still too small. Let's consult the internet. Ugh...

This is caterpillar poop. Left behind by either the tomato hornworm or the tobacco hornworm, both big fat types of caterpillars that demolish tomato plants (and tobacco plants, judging by the name). A little grossed out, but determined that my tomatoes will not be destroyed, I set out in search of the invaders.

I found one! But... wait... this is not a tomato plant. It is not a tobacco plant. This is a tomatillo plant. Mr. hornworm, you are confused. While mocking the destructive little idiot, I was able to identify him as a tobacco hornworm (the stinger on his butt is red instead of black, and he has seven diagonal stripes on each side instead of eight V-shaped marks). I found some gloves, peeled this guy off the stem (they hold on tight), and dropped him in a bucket of soapy water. The soap keeps them from getting out, and they drown. Muahaha!

Moving on to the tomato plants... I found quite a few more. How? One, look for that nasty black poop on the ground. I usually found them somewhere on the top of the plant I found the poop beneath. You can also look for stems that look like the leaves have been pulled off. The guy below is in the process of doing so. They are thorough eaters, they consume an entire leaf and move on. Did I mention they are huge? They're huge. The size of my index finger.

Most of the damage I found was near the top of the plant, which is also where all the hornworms were. During the hotter part of the day they tended to be slightly in the shade, but as the sun started going down they were happy to be right there on top of the plant. The guy below was happily munching away on a tomato, even with all those nice leaves around him. Bastard.

So he went swimming. Adieu!

Squash Bugs

Oh, I hate these suckers. Squash bugs. They nibble on the soft rinds of the zucchini and summer squash, leaving unsightly spots and, worse, can also cause the plant to wilt very suddenly. They hide their eggs on the underside of zucchini and summer squash leaves.

They also put them on the stalks, just because they can. My baby patty pan squashes are in peril!

This one stuck her eggs way down in a crevice where she thought I wouldn't find them. Ha!

Here's one of those bad boys. This is the down side of using straw mulch to keep the weeds down... it provides a perfect place for these bugs to run and hide when I am on the warpath.

I don't particularly want to drench the entire garden in chemicals. My solution? Remove the eggs manually. It's easy, but time consuming. Wrap some tape around your fingers and go over every leaf to get the eggs off. First I tried no-name, cheap brown packing tape (pictured here) since I thought it would be gentler on the leaves, but found it didn't pick up eggs as well. I found a lot more success with clear Scotch packing tape. It doesn't stick to the leaf, so don't worry about that, but you do have to be aggressive. You have to push hard on the tape to get the eggs, and you will smash the leaf a little. The plant will recover from some leaf damage... it may not recover from the bugs.

You can probably just pick the eggs off with a fingernail. I prefer to use the tape, because once I'm done I fold the tape over, trapping the eggs inside, ensuring there is no possible way they're going to hatch (or if they do, there's nowhere for the bug to go).