Even after cracking all those tomato plant hornworm eggs, I'm still finding more caterpillars on my plants, including a few that have been badly parasitized by whatever it is that makes those white things on their backs. They've gotten to some of my actual tomatoes, eating big chunks out of them. I've been cutting off the stems they're on, putting them in water picks and sticking them in the soil of the big container that had a tomato growing in it - it was going to be the plant I gave the hornworms, but it's just a skeleton of one now. Wagner says that tobacco hornworms have 7 diagonal lines and tomato hornworms have 8 with an extra horizontal line along the bottom making the diagonal lines look like sideways 'Vs' - mine all have 7 diagonal lines, no white line across the bottom, plus all their horns have turned red, so they must all be tobacco hornworms/manducca sexta. I'm just going to let them find their own place to tunnel underground - there's plenty of it out there! I've been feeding them the stems on my tomato plants that are in shady spots that will never flower and make tomatoes, like the lowermost leaves and others. Several times people have asked how I got interested in butterflies and moths. After finding so many stripped tomato plant branches and tomatoes that had been bitten into, I remembered that it was actually tomato/tobacco hornworms that prompted me to really get into wildlife. It was all the beautiful butterflies I saw on this property when we first looked at it that really made me want to buy it. Then after we moved here, I enjoyed the butterflies, but didn't study them, much less raise any myself. I planted a garden each spring like I did when I lived in town - in town, I'd get an occasional hornworm, but they didn't do enough damage to worry about. After we moved here I'd hardly get any tomatoes at all because of the JILLIONS of huge hornworms that totally devoured my plants. The weeds grew more rampantly than they ever did in town, too. I finally decided that the only way I'd ever be able to grow tomatoes or other vegetables here was to use vast amounts of insecticides, which is something I didn't want to do - this has got to be one of the "buggiest" places in America! Since I couldn't lick 'em, I joined 'em! The grocery store has plenty of vegetables, I thought, so that's where I'd get them. I made this picture of two of the tobacco hornworms - notice that one has dark lines and the other doesn't - MissSherry

Could you put the pot in a cardboard box or a plastic box that would provide some protection? You could also line the box with newspapers. You just want to allow the pupae to have the same temperatures as the soil about 5 inches below the surface. And, in your neck of the woods, that may be above the freeze line. If so, then I wouldn't worry about the pupae. I'd be tempted to take the worm and put it in a gallon-sized plastic bag filled with torn strips of paper toweling. Then I'd watch for pupation. Afterwards, I'd put everything in the produce drawer of the refrigerator until the weather begins to warm up in the spring. I put 6 Tomato hornworms in a plastic container full of paper towel strips last fall to over winter. I kept them on my patio in a sheltered place. When spring arrived, I removed the paper toweling and left the pupae bare until they eclosed. Every one of them eclosed just fine. But, our winters are a lot warmer than yours.

Susan, Thanks. It still isn't there, so I guess maybe it has pupated? It was very large. Based on the photos you linked, I think it likely was the Big Poplar sphinx. I looked closely at the plant. About 6" of it had been eaten, from the top down. Because there was not a huge amount of the plant eaten during the three days I was seeing that caterpillar on it, I do kinda think it must have been hanging around a few days as it prepared to pupate. I was wondering why it was in the same place on the same plant day after day, but it makes sense it might have been preparing to pupate as it was very large so definitely had been through several instars already. Bre, Even though I love tomatoes, I tolerate tomato hornworms. I just move them to other plants that I grow. Only very rarely has one damaged a tomato plant enough to cause me concern. While I don't grow all these other plants that Susan mentioned specifically for the hornworms, I just always make sure I have enough of them that the hornworms will have plenty to eat. Some years I have planted extra tomato plants in an out-of-the-way place where the hornworms can eat them all that they want, and if I have a tobacco hornworm damaging a tomato plant, I just move it to the extra tomato plants. About the only time they have ever damaged a plant enough to alarm me was with two potted brugmansias I overwintered in the garage. In early spring when nothing else they liked was growing, the first hornworms just about stripped the two brugmansias down to bare stems on days when I moved the brugmansias out of the garage into the sunlight. When we lived in town, I never had enough hornworms around to worry me. They are a lot more plentiful out here in our rural area than they were in town. It was my then young son who was fascinated with the hawkmoths that really caused me to pay attention to them. I was not necessarily thrilled to learn that the cool moths we enjoyed watching in the evening were the same creature that gobbled up my tomato plants in summer, but I got over it. I never really have many on my tomato plants anyway, and think that some of the companion plants I grow with tomatoes may have something to do with that. Susan, I grow every plant you listed.....and I wasn't even really trying to provide a food source for the hornworms. Well, let me say that a different way. I planted all those plants because I like them, but then I let many of them reseed and reproduce abundantly so that then there would be enough to feed the hornworms too. I also am growing garden huckleberries, Aunt Molly's Ground Cherries,regular no-name ground cherries and cape gooseberries, all of which are solanums, so I guess the hornworms will have even more stuff to feast upon should they choose to do so. Out in the pastures we have even more native solanums, so I would think there's abundant food for them this year. Dawn

Posted by coolbythecoast I pick off a couple of hornworms every time I survey my plants, I suppose. But what to do to dispatch them? The birds don't seem too interested. Sometimes I toss them over the edge of the hill and hope that they don't crawl back. Tonight I picked off quite a large one, decided to just step on it. Pop! I am disgusted. I mean Ew! Gary I use the "step on them" approach. It seems quick. But the first few attempts were really gross. Now I have the foot positioning down and know to toss the worm onto a firm spot before stepping on it. A friend I garden with refers to my dispatch method as "playing GOD" She prefers to toss them over the fence onto the asphalt road. If they make it back to the garden she feels they have earned it. Seems inhuman to me. Our local paper ran a hornworm article. The writer puts his on the driveway and has his kids use them as a bike obstacle course. Now something is wrong with that in my opinion...I'll stick with the squish em quick technique. Guess everyone has their own opinion....and I know mine changed after finding the first 20 or so. They lost their cuteness after that.