I came home from vacation to find hornworms had destroyed my garden - but I didn't get rid of them! Find out why. #organicgardening #hornworm #organicpestcontrol Amazon shop: amzn.to/48WDuQ8
To us in NC tobacco fields these are tobacco worms. Disposal, just dash them on the ground, however to "celebrate" the first one(s) found for the year we tossed them down the tractor exhaust...wait 2-4 seconds rev the engine high and watch the cooked worm get spit out end over end a few feet above the exhaust.
Around 1967, I trained my pet hen to protect the garden by stalking through the garden and pouncing on parasites. She was separated at hatch from the others because they would peck her deformed foot, and she was taken in to live for three years with the cats and dog.
I have also seen ducks used successfully in gardens, to feast on garden pests. They don't hurt the plants. Plus the chicken / duck poop adds as fertilizer. Its just messy....
we have a hen that had the top half of her beak torn off by a rat, just at the nostrils... so she needs a bucket of feed with at least 2 inches of feed so she can actually eat. sitting on the couch, 3 times a day, boooork bok bok bok... waltzes in the door, dogs learnt to ignore her but chase the others away... has a stack of books wedged into the opening so the dogs dont eat it. if she comes in and its closed... boooork bok bok... comes looking for someone to open it up...
Haha! 60 year old native Texas Redneck! I agree whole heatedly, they are creepy, and devistateing... A lit ciggerett or cigar doles out some satisfaction, would you believe they spit as well, put a cigarette OUT! Sheeze, I find them hard to grab, (willies) but a pair of kitchen scissors does a great job! Peace, and happy harvesting!
My grandfather always planted a Dill plant between each of his tomato plants he said that the Hornworms would go to the Dill first and that eating Dill made the Hornworms brighter and easier to spot!!! 🤠👍
FRost killed my marigolds, and the enormous basil bush did nothing to save my seven tomato plants, they were chewed down to the stems. Now, I have chickens....and the tide has turned for the hornworms. Mwa ha ha ha ha!
@@naomihatfield3015lol, you evil villain, you! In all seriousness, do the chickens do a good job of getting the bugs without destroying the crops? I am finally getting chickens and looking for info on how much to let them roam the garden. Thx!
@@corinne1691 do not give chicken free reign in the garden….their version of “gardening” is considerably more…inventive…than yours….and they enjoy many of the same vegetables that you do. I pull the hornworms off and feed them to the chickens….hornworms are high in calcium, and the birds love them.
Thanks. I learned a lot from this video. Spotting and removing those nasty hornworms as early as possible is key, but it’s easy to miss seeing them because they blend in so well with their surroundings. Did you know you can easily spot tomato hornworms by searching for them at night using a black light? The black light makes them glow in the dark! I just noticed several other commenters also recommended this. 🐛
Gee, I didn't know about this! My tomatoes suffered greatly this summer from hornworms and I'm going to try this next year should I have the problem again. Thanks!
I'm not terribly crazy about the hornworms either, but the hawk moths are themselves important pollinators - though most species are principally nocturnal, and underappreciated for that reason. However, I often have a trail camera on my garden, and there is a LOT of nighttime activity of hawk moths. I also pick the hornworms off my tomatoes and introduce them to the deadly nightshade that grows in some of the weedier areas around the horses' pasture. They feed on THAT, and hopefully their offspring will decide nightshade is a better dinner menu item.
Years ago. I first attempted to grow tomatoes since they get expensive here in California. Around summer time, one of these horn worms somehow got inside the greenhouse and ate all the leaves from the only tomato plant that I was successfully growing. I managed to capture it (which was bigger than my thumb) as it was eating the last leaf on my now dead tomato plant. As revenge, I fed this now plump tomato worm to my red ear slider turtles and it looked like it was the best meal they ever had in years!
My wife and I would go out after dark with a black light flashlight to find them. They glow bright green in the UV light and even the tiny ones are easy to find. We bought the flashlight off Amazon.
That's what I did when I spied one trimming back my tomatoes. Chickens loved the horn worms and u did initially make the mistake of feeding them the ones with the cocoons on them thinking it was hornworm eggs. Black light makes them glow up a neon green and easy to find and dispatch.
The first time that I've ever seen a tomato hornworm was a few weeks ago, in my friend's garden, and it was covered in parasitic wasp cocoons. It never ceases to amaze me how nature works.
The hummingbird moths are just a slightly different species of hawk moth with a fluffy tail. They all hover majestically around flowers. Just some are more of a pest than others.
I don't know if this is common, but I recall my grandma teaching us to locate tomato horn worms by clicking two fingernails together. The horn worms would respond with a similar click and we could locate them by sound, sort of a homegrown fish finder for hornworms. It worked.
Your Grams was a master of the garden ..I've noticed that they do make a clicking sound when I've made my presence known after spotting them never thought to do that.. great tip
Largest hornworms we ever had were on a globe willow tree in our yard. They were ridiculously huge, we found 11 of them and picked them off. Took them to a local nursery thinking maybe they were some weird subspecies. Garden center people freaked out, they had never seen or heard of any that size before.
I celebrate the horn worm wasps but rarely do they find the Ill fated horn worm before I do. But I have the luxury to be in my garden daily and usually spot the black droppings of the horn worm before it gets too far into destroying my tomatoes. Thanks for another great informative episode.
Normally I catch them pretty fast too...though there was one that got past me a couple months ago that left the biggest mounds of caterpillar crap that I have ever seen
Liberty Girl , buy plastic semi transparent sheets to cover your plants in place. Cattle panels help to make a strong structure to support your plastic sheets. You can increase the temp inside an open ended greenhouse by as much as 15 degrees but compost added to a closed ended greenhouse can easily maintain optimal growing temps all winter.
Hard to find locally but worth it. Had an outbreak of THWs in August, one application and none the rest of the season. It really works and only affects caterpillars.
Down south you might hear them called "baccer worms" since a close relative of the tomato hornworm eats tobacco plants (also a nightshade). We also have a pest down here called "bean leaf-rollers" which do about the same thing to beanstalks. My beans were destroyed since I listened to the organic gardening advice of not killing them! Took about five days for all the leaves to be eaten. They also eat kudzu, but seemingly have nowhere near the affinity for it that they have for garden variety legumes.
Tobacco worms make good fishing bait. You cut em up in pieces and turn them inside out and put em on the hook, like you do catalpa worms. And like catalpa worms you can freeze them and use them later. When I was a kid and teenager working in the tobacco field, we would catch the worms and give them to the old fella driving the tractor in the field. We'd catch him crickets too. Maybe you can cut back on the bean roller damage by planting at a different time. Some bugs have a short period of time in which they are more prevalent. I used to grow a lot of cowpea/southern pea varieties and one year I tried planting some several weeks earlier than I did in the past. They grew fine but almost overnight they got attacked by the Mexican bean beetle. The plants looked like they'd been shot with birdshot. I planted more peas at the same time I'd been previously doing and had no problems. I found out later that the beetles had a certain time of the year that they were out, and that even though the weather was favorable to grow them, that's why no one planted them too early.
I found a huge one on my tomato plant last night. It was treating my grown from seed plant like it was at Burger King. The squish it made under my shoe was so rewarding! I'm going to check my girls for more tonight.
Okay, for one thing, your child is absolutely adorable... and for another thing, thanks for the tip about the tomato hornworms... you have two awesome channels...
Last year I dealt with what I thought was a crazy amount of these guys I was sure they were Tomato Hornworms nope they were Tobacco Hornworms interesting plot twist. I love the new channel keep being extra Liberty Dollish. 🇺🇸
As someone who has dealt with those nasty things I can say I would remove them as soon as I saw them. Fortunately our family's tomato plants never got decimated like that.
We always called them Tomato worms and take the branch they are on along with them, put them in a jar and the kids have a new pet for a short time.. I've never seen or heard of the wasp thingy's but, now I'll keep an eye out for them.. THANKS L.D.!!!
I move them from my tomatoes to some wild grape plants nearby. They can munch the wild grapes all they want and still turn into the beautiful moths that I enjoy.
No hornworms this year. Last year I had a world record of 14 on one plant on my deck. 🤮 I got over stomping on them. My rule is, if you have one, you probably have more. Try leaving the plants to finish ripening the fruits. I saw one video suggesting that the worms glow under black light. I was excited and prepared to try that. Not disappointed that the opportunity didn’t surface.
@@libertyhomestead Just wear your red white polka-dot apron and a white bow in your hair. We'll know it's you. That's all we need to see. Tomato worms are so gross! Seeing them, picking them off, stomping on them, seeing their Vulcan green blood! Just do a YT short video IF it works.
I left for work, leaving two absolutely beautiful, full of blooms tomatoe plants. I came home 8 hours later, to two totally stripped bare to the stalks, tomato plants, because of two huge green worms. I was so upset I smashed them to a pulverized state with a brick. That was in 2008. I've never grown any more tomato plants since. Life took a turn, and it hasn't been possible to grow anymore veggies. Ugh...
Yep, back when I gardened, I had a couple of those hornworms, and one of them had those white things on it. The hornworm was slower at that point. I had a feeling what was going on, mentioned it at work, and that's when I learned it was parasitic wasps. So, I got evil and and said to it, "DIE....die you tomato killer! YA-Haaaaaa-haaa!"
The best way to control these are with BT. (Bacillus Thuringiensis) You just spray your plants at the first sign and they will be gone before they do any more damage. And BT lasts just about forever on the bottle. I've got a spray bottle 15 years old and it's still an active brew.
This is why people didn't travel much unless it was absolutely necessary, back when people still virtually completely depended on the yields of their labor/gardens and crops to survive.
Upon being let out in the summer and early fall, my ladies 🐔 inspect the garden for pests. I trained one hen years ago and she trained the other ladies who've trained other ladies and so on....
My dad, a real green thumb, used to start dozens of tomato plants in our rich Illinois soil (Illinois USED to be good for something), and, of course, we would get tomato hornworms with, yes, that little horn, and the perfect green camoflage. They were easy enough to pick off and toss in the dirt, where one could squish them or just let the birds find them. Never knew how they got so big to begin with. I was once yold they would become Monarch butterflies, but, were that so (quite happily not so), I'd happily do without the butterflies to do without the hornworms. Hamas worms?
My first and last garden I planted in the 1980s, I had beautiful tomato plants and those horn worms were prolific. I picked them off by hand and dropped them in a coffee can with some kerosene in it. Read somewhere to do that. As if they weren't disgusting enough they make "click" sounds at you when you grab them. I tried to have an organic garden and planted marigolds amongst the tomato plants (hornworm infestation), the squash plants (squash vine borer infestation). The pests were so bad they ATE my marigold plants too. 🤣
I killed a few dozen of those hornworms from my 7 tomatillo plants last summer. We used a black light (flashlight) to locate them at night, where these worms' stripes & spots glow brightly. Pulled them off with pliers, tossed them into a bucket of water to drown them. They absolutely ruined my crop in a matter of a couple of days. This year, we didn't find a single hornworm. We ended up with about 100 tomatillo fruits, even after the squirrels, ants, and other critters took their bounty.
Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) works great never had a problem and Bt proteins are allowed in organic farming I also use neem oil and neem oil and BT are also known to be effective way to control mosquitoes.
I never had Horn Worm here in Phoenix, and my tomatoes are generally OK, while in season (basically early spring and fall), but Aphids are the Bane of my existence, and they destroy all of my brassicas every year. This fall I planted lavender in-line with all my brassicas and have pots of mums to try to control them. fingers crossed. I also have DE I can spread if that doesn't work.
Cut back on the nitrogen; it's why there's an aphid problem. Over fertilizing can be just as detrimental as under fertilizing. And use soapy water to spray the aphids on your plants. Do it as a preventive, especially at seasonal temperature changes. (Spring and Fall) Aphids are not much affected by inter-planting commonly believed insect control companion plants, except that they serve to use up the excess nitrogen in the soil. Next year, get yourself some Praying Mantis. They are workhorses in the garden at keeping insect population under control. Just make sure after a morning in the garden to check your clothing; those guys like to hitch rides into the house where they will not survive without food.😂
I think it helps to start the cuttings in water. I add a little rooting hormone. When the roots form you'll know where they are forming. Then into cups. Just finding my way on tomato cuttings. Hope you get them up in time.
I feel for you Ms. LD. It is incredible how much those hornworms can destroy in just one day and the little buggers blend in so well. Every evening, I use to go through each plant to find the little "eating machines".... and finally realized they really wanted to fly out into the street where they play dodgeball with cars. I think they love the adventure. Can you tell how much I understand how you feel? I have tried marigolds all through the garden.... couldn't really tell how effective they were though.
One year I was sick and blew off my peppers and tomatoes. We are in Arizona so, a little bit of cover and they do well year round outside. Well, I just moved them to another part of the yard, fed my plants and by October, I had the most plentiful harvest ever. After that, the plats that were stripped were the most productive by a wide margin. Since then, I just let them be 🤷🏼♀. Sorry for your plant loss though.. that is harsh
Sorry about your tomatos. Good luck with the rescue. A little FYI, Hawk moths and hummingbird moths are the same thing. What people call a hawk moth in one place call it a humming bird moth some place else. Other places sphinx moth.What ever you call it they don't belong in your garden! 😖
Thankfully it has been awhile since I’ve had any hornworms. Loved your description that they were the bane of your existence and deserved being banished to hornworm hell. Lol.
1) you can use a black light to spot them easy at night. During the day they’re camouflaged into the plant 2) I threw about 20 into the pond , fish wouldn’t eat them, strangely enough they float 3) my research said they’re poisonous so I wouldn’t feed them to chickens. I discovered this after I threw into pond
I had hand surgery After hornworm season, it also rained finally, and when I got back to the garden, there were leaves, blooms and now many little tomatoes! I am going to dig one beauty up and put on porch. The leaved branches can be laid in water and rooted also.
Those worms are also know as tobacco worms and as a former tobacco farmer and she is right about the wasp but if they don't have that on them kill those MF things when they get to about 4to5 inches long they go underground and become the thing she showed trust her and if you are a fisherman they are good to catch catfish with
Yes, 20 years ago, I actually thought these little white things on the back of these hornworms were maybe actually hornworm eggs being carried on the hornworms backs...I guess I was thinking of it like a mother opposum carrying her babies on her back... So, after a couple seasons came and went back then, I finally googled what these white things actually were. I was surprised! Once I learned what was really happening, I agreed with you to leave them alone and let the wasps mature to help with hornworm control the next season. But, I agree that I don't think I would have the stomach to squash them. They are too big and juicy!
Ha! Nice. I've always seen the hornworms in the garden growing up (haven't had a big enough garden to matter yet as an adult) but have never seen one with the predator cocoons. Very nice & informative video.
I grow tomatoes every year, so I thought I'd listen to your video. When I saw you, I said to myself, Wow, it's Liberty Doll! Small world. I subscribed to this channel too!!
I have not found a hornworm on my tomoatoes in quite a few years and I am not sure why. But i will say that it started when I planted really hot chiles nearby. Cayenne, serrano, habanero, etc.
I used not to like wasps until I saw Stefan Sobkowiak videos. Interesting how nature doesn't always play the way we want. But as you learn about it you can make big improvements. Good video.
I showed my wife a huge hornworm in our garden once and she said that if she was picking tomatoes and touched a hornworm she'd have to cut her arm off.
Horn worms are huge and beautiful, just about the coolest thing I've ever seen. They do eat a lot though. I put them on something night shade in the wild. Hawk moths also, they are giant, and amazing. I'm in awe of these interesting creatures and could never bring myself to kill them. Just because we like the same food doesn't mean they deserve a death sentence. Creatures have feelings too you know, and value their lives like we do.
