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

I explored two of my buckets today and found 4 chrysalis (out of 5....found remnants of what I think was the 5th one, bucket got rained in and I think killed that one). Anyway, three are "normal" with one being very active when I picked it up. The 4th looks more advanced, could make out the head and eyes I think, so assuming it's going to come out this year. Or can I still fridge it too, to keep it from emerging so late in the year? Also again, what's best way to save in fridge, it's a side by side frost free, so can I even put them in there? My mom has a top freezer fridge in her basement...better to put them there for the winter? And I think I read shredded moist paper towels or layered paper towels will work? Right now I just put them all in one bucket with their dirt pods....pretty cool how they have that little hollow home in the dirt clods. Questions questions! Hope somebody can give me advice soon!

I saw this post on another forum and immediately jumped to the same conclusion that this big guy is a tobacco or tomato hornworm. But it just dawned on me that we missed some clues! The color of the horn and the fact that those are NOT tomatoes or potatoes, etc. There are other green hornworms and I'm thinking that this might be a Laurel Sphinx moth cat. The horn will be green or black. What do you think, saccharum?

Wow, that's a big one! They are SO hard to locate, aren't they? Even the big ones blend in so well. Other than hand-picking, I think the best treatment is to spray the plants with Bt, the all-natural bacteria that is parasitic on caterpillars. It won't hurt bees or other non-caterpillars. You just mix a slurry with water and wet ALL of the foliage and the caterpillars stop eating within a day and die several days later. That being said, I DO let the caterpillars have their way with my daturas and nightshade plants (although I relocate them to larger plants when they victimize smaller plants). They become those amazing night-flying hovermoths/hummingbird moths, so I tolerate the damage on daturas. There are several brands of Bt out there, but if you go to a nursery or hardware store garden section and tell them what you want, they'll find it. Here's the brand I keep on hand, just in case (works on all caterpillars by the way). Great pic! Let us know what you do and how it works out, Happy gardening! Grant