OMG!!! help, what is it?????

[tink]

Hey...Like everyone has said it is a tomato worm. I wouldn't use sevin dust because it harms the good bugs too. Just pick them off and give them to your chickens. If you should find one with what looks like eggs on its back, let it be. The eggs are from a wasp that feeds on these worms. Next year you wont have a problem with them because the wasps will hang around......Also the horn on its back end will not hurt you. It is just meant to scare you.
Tink

 

[JennsPeeps]

That, my dear, is chicken food.

 

[ole-crone]

UGLY???

Go to www.hummingbirdmoth.com and see what beautiful creatures these are.

Some people suggest that rather than kill them, you gather them, put them into containers, feed them tomato leaves and let them pupate. Then in the spring, watch them hatch and fly around your garden in the evening.

I've read about some who plant 'junk' tomatoes and move all of them over to that section of the garden.

These guys are beautiful and in my opinion a welcome addition to any garden and worth losing a few plants.

 

[Lunachick]

I found four of them on my tomato plants, I just pluck them off and toss them to the chickens, but they didn't know what to do with them, and the next morning, i just threw them in my compost bin with a bit of tomato plant. They can live out the rest of their lives in the other side of my yard, not on my tomatoes. I was having good luck with my veggie garden this year and i wasn't willing to share.

 

[wishin4chicken]

Wow!!! I just learned the tomato horn worm turns into a five-spotted hawk moth and...they look like tiny hummingbirds.

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/Pubs/insect/05517.html

Seriously, I was out watering our tomato plants one evening and saw one of these guys. I thought I'd had a little too much wine with dinner and was seeing things.

Couldn't believe my eyes. It looked like a hummer with antennae.

Thanks therealsilkiechick for the post. Now I know!!

 

[chickster88]

They're pretty! (The moths, not the squirmy things!) I like the idea of culling some tomato leaves to feed them in "captivity" before setting them loose later, or the suggestion to grow some sacrificial plants to feed them on in a corner of the yard. Mind you, I'm not the one whose garden they've infiltrated, so I'll shut up now!

 

[keesmom]

They can be big and ugly. Luckily ours were found by parasitic wasps and they've all but disappeared.

Whatever you do please don't use sevin. It is extremely toxic to bees.

-Cindy in MA

 

[SundownWaterfowl]

eww. I had one of those on my tomato plant also. They are so large and gross. lol

 

[Wildsky]

Didn't they eat those dang things on FEAR FACTOR?

 

[dogzrule5]

I had no idea what tomator horn worms turned in to - I learn something new every day on this place.

Just so you know the difference, please do a search on a swallotail butterfly's caterpillar. They have yellow stripes but some people I know have mistaken them for bad bugs.