Help! I believe there are hornworms in my tomatedo garden can someone help me?

Question

Hi, I believe there are hormworms in my tomateo garden, I find holes in my tomateo's, leaves, and stems like perfect little circles, but I go through my garden to find the causer and I find nothing It's like these bugs are playing games with me on purpose so I go to my trumpit plants because they have holes in them too and I find little I believe catapillers because they dont have the horns on them like the hormworms do, and I spray the 1-3 vegtable and flower insect/fungus/mold spray on them and this problem keeps coming back and my tomateo plants are growing new fresh tomateo's finally someone please help me get rid of this problem I will highly apreciate it and thank you for your valuable time.

Answer 1

The least toxic way to kill these caterpillars is to either pick them off, or spray your plants with Bacillus thuringensis, or BT (e.g., Dipel, Thuricide), considered very effective, especially on smaller larvae.
Rototilling... turning up the soil after harvest will destroy any pupae that may be there.
http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/CoopExt/4DMG/Pests/tomato.htm

If the hornworm has what looks like little grains of rice sticking up all over its back, just leave it be. Those are parasitic wasp eggs that will soon hatch and devour their host, and then go seek out more.
If you want chemical controls, hornworms can be controlled with carbaryl, permethrin, spinosad insecticides.
This site: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-18693469.html lists these pesticides ... carbaryl, pyrethrin, or rotenone.
I'd try organic controls first.
Good luck! Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Angel has brought up some good points! Actually you may just have a common tomato worm, not the hornworm. Tomato fruit worm will take a bite here and there, a nibble here and there. The Hornworm will take all of the leaf (those are individual leaflets) leaving just the vein. As a gift they leave little black pellets poop on the leaves below or on the ground........another good tool to tell if you have hornworms. Hornworms are hard to spot! The tomato fruit worm also hides well (sometimes in the fruit, yuck) BT works for the fruit worm and smaller hornworms. By the time I find them, hitting them with the BT bottle works better and quicker.

Another thought is birds pecking the fruit. As for the holes, there's a cute little bee that cuts perfect round holes in leaves for use in nesting material. I doubt she's in tomatoes though as the leaves would be toxic to the babies. Instead you have either grasshoppers or some other misc caterpillar munching around.

Bacillus thuringensis (Bt) comes in a powder or spray. What they don't tell you is it is very sun sensitive. It degrades in a day or two when exposed to UV light. So spray in late afternoon and spray or dust every other day. (OK, newer formulas are suppose to be more UV resistant........hmmm)

the "7" mentioned is Sevin dust or carbaryl. Murder on bees so use with care, spray early evening when the bees are in bed.

Answer 3

Go organic! Spray your plants with diluted dish soap. This will keep many pests away and not be harmful for you (you're eating these veggies sprayed with insecticide/fungicide?) or the environment. Marigolds are great to keep in the vicinity for preventing other pests. Even though the horn worms (tomato worms) are very beautiful creatures, they need to go as they proliferate very quickly. When I had this problem I basically hand-picked them off the plants and tossed them off into the canyon (or the barb-e if it was hot). If they are tomato worms, you should be able to find them (may be difficult as they blend in well, but they are sizeable). Again, try the dish soap remedy.

Answer 4

I don't get many of those in my garden, but when I suspect there are some of those creatures around I have my husband go outside and we look for them and then I let him hand pick them off the plants. They are very difficult to spot since they camouflage themselves so well.

Answer 5

Just because you believe garden gnomes to be evil...doesn't make them so. So, the only thing to be said about people who purchase them is that they evidently like the looks of gnomes in their gardens.

Answer 6

7 dust