What fun - hunting tomato hornworms at night with a UV flashlight!

[NRaleighLiberal]

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCkJlI7gxfa/

I was working on my plants today (129 plants - busy year), and noted some damage and the characteristic poop balls - I found a few, but a few eluded me. But using the UV light tonight, I found one!

My new after sunset job...kind of fun!

Not sure if the pic link I put above will work if you are not on Instagram. I don't use a photo sharing site, though - just my blog, newsletter and Instagram for my pics.

[Kali]

1. ugh, my worst nightmare, but good tip

we use those flashlights to hunt for scorpions

pic doesn't work for me, even after asking to sign up through faceplant

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. Instagram is the only place I now post - left FB and Twitter last year.

@nctomatoman there.

[Kali]

3. I'm only on fb when somebody posts a link there, otherwise haven't been in months

never got a twitter or instagram account.

[NRaleighLiberal]

4. Instagram is a useful teaching tool

I go live every Friday at 3 eastern for 45 min - do demos, answer questions - fun!

I've retired from the road - no more travel speaking trips for me. Going to start doing webinars on Zoom from my office. I am such a home body (esp at our new location!)

[Kali]

9. I hear you!

this thing has just allowed me to be even more antisocial and hermit-like. grocery store once every week to 10 days, send somebody else to feed and hardware store, and about once a week go do a window visit with an old friend in skilled nursing.

oh and the last couple weeks - some trips to the hospital for rabies shots

in case you didn't catch that story - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10181373791

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. But they turn into such lovely hummingbird moths!

[NRaleighLiberal]

7. no - they turn into Hawkmoths

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manduca_quinquemaculata

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. You're right, I sometimes get them mixed up.

Also sometimes called sphinx moths. But they're beautiful too.

[dweller]

6. have you considered purchasing Braconid wasps ?

aka hornworm wasp

✌🏼

[NRaleighLiberal]

8. no need to purchase - they eventually show up here - but before they do, a hornworm

can do a lot of damage. They go from tiny to huge and can eat lots of a plant.

Once they have the wasp pupae on their bodies, I leave them.

[dweller]

11. i figured as much

but i knew you had moved, wasn't sure of the habitat in the mountains..

every time i found hornworm outbreak, i always found 1 with eggs too, so removed others and left that 1 alone ..

btw, PBS played the segment of your tomato fest party recently on 1 of their gardening shows, i suppose it plays every season

✌🏼

[captain queeg]

10. Made me think of going out and getting nightcrawlers

At night after a rain for fishing. I could even sell them for 50 cents/dozen.

[calguy]

13. UV light is the ONLY way to get these crittrrs

They drove me CrAzY before I got my light. Now it's about five minutes each night checking on 16 plants. Gotten over 50 so far this year. The UV light makes them glow so I can get them when they're still small and before they've destroyed much of the plant. The chickens feast on them the next morning. Win/Win

[RGinNJ]

14. My dad used to put out shallow bowls of beer worked just fine.

[UserNotFound]

18. I think

That you may be thinking of slugs...? Hornworms usually target the new growth near the tops of tomato (and pepper) plants...

[dem in texas]

15. Old Gardening Memory

One summer, my youngest was about 5 or 6 and was into caterpillars in a big way. One day she came home with her two little hands full of tomato hornworms. I told to take a stone and kill them before they got in my garden. I forgot all about it until a few days later and saw that they were eating on my tomato plants. She admitted that she'd let them go in my garden. The way I got rid of them was to get up at the crack of dawn while they were still out. It took a couple of early mornings, but I killed them all.

[NJCher]

20. hah

reminds me of when I used to get up early with my cat and brush slugs into soapy water. Often I would return to bed. She had her own cat door.

I woke up after having gone back to bed after another slug session, and there was my kitty, dropping a slug on my nice, clean sheets.

"Hey you forgot one!"

[japple]

16. I hate those things, but birds and chickens LOVE hornworms. I always try to drown them in a bucket

water and then throw them out where the birds will find them. Back when we had chickens, I would just remove them from the tomato plant with kitchen tongs and throw them into the chicken pen. They went crazy over them.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

17. Wow, new to me. Both the UV flashlight and the hornworms.

We have too many critters living here in the woods to have much success with veggies, but I have a few tomato plants in pots this year and all the tomatoes have some sort of damage. A friend said the holes, which look just like what I found when your post made me look up hornworm damage, were from turtle bites. I thought that was silly, but I honestly didn't know if he was kidding or not!

Now I'm going to have to get me a UV flashlight and look for hornworms. (OK, maybe I'll make my husband do it. I'm way too squeamish, which sucks in a gardener.)

[UserNotFound]

19. Very cool pic!

I've been fortunate this season...no hornworms at all! I've never used a UV light, but an ordinary LED flashlight works really well, also. It makes the worms "glow" red...