I do the same thing for hornworms that I do for all the insects: I plant flowers that support predator insects, and I don't use pesticides AT ALL, not even the organic ones. It's hell in a new garden, but after a couple of years the number of harmful bugs goes way down. This year I have not seen one hornworm in my 3 year old garden, but I've seen a number of them in my garden that's new this year. Last year almost every hornworm I saw had little white things almost like rice kernels sticking up all over it. These are the eggs of parasitic wasps. If you see this, let the hornworm keep eating. Before it becomes an adult it will die and release a bunch of adult parasitic wasps. These tiny wasps are completely harmless except to hornworms and some other worms. This summer in my new garden the squash bugs killed all my squashes. In the old garden I didn't see any squash bug damage. And all I have to do is plant some pretty flowers, and most of them are perennials or self sowing annuals so after a year or two I need to do very little. Sunflowers are about the only ones I HAVE to plant every year because the birds eat all the seeds.
Welcome to the thread.
Did you see some gray teardrop shaped bugs on the plants? Those are squash bugs and the squash in my new garden looked like that this year after they got going on them.
Yeah, squash bugs. I should have let the chickens out into the garden, but didn't. What kind of perreinials do you plant to keep them down? I do intersperse marigolds among the tomatoes.
