Well, if it's a caterpillar, it got there because a moth laid an egg somewhere on the plant.

is it a tomato horned worm? I had one on a tomatillo, but the two of us couldn't find it... then WHAMMO this morning I picked 5 off one tomato plant. Luckily I caught them before they decimated too much.

BT works well on getting rid of caterpillars.

So does picking and throwing... :o) less chemicals too.

I prefer the picking and stomping method myself. :))

I have several tomato plants as well as hot pepper plants in the ground. I've yet to see one bug on any of them. For some reason they all prefer my brugs. The brugs seem to be the attractant plants. Especially the varigated brugs, altho they leave many of the other varieties alone. Altho I've had the suckers on my brugmansias in the past, this year seems to be the worst. Half my brugs I now call my 'lace plants'. I can't keep up with finding them all.

In our old gardens I used to grow Nicotianas which were the attractant plant of choice. Altho I've read that you aren't supposed to grow them near tomatoes (same family), I did by accident and by accident I realized that the worms were attracted to them. I never had one tomato worm on my vegies and they loved the Nicotianas. From that year on I always grew them near the vegies and it worked like a charm.

I think I'm going to have either try to find my saved seed for the Nicotianas or buy more for next year and see if they work as well with the brugs as they did with the tomatoes, peppers, cucs, etc.

Jenna

At my old place, I had borage reseeding itself all over the place... I never had a problem with THW's in the tomatoes, but they stripped a nicotiana half an acre away. My brugs have had other problems this year... a runaway spidermite problem, got that undercontrol, then this tiny bug, don't know what it was, very small, just a wee bit bigger than an ahpid, black and I think orange, made holes in my brugs... but got THAT undercontrol... those were actually easy to control, pinching took care of THEM.
The picking and stomping works, but I am too squeamish, those aren't small worms! I throw them out in the street, to either get cooked, squished by a car or eaten by the crows. :o)

Heathen, I think you right. I looked up pics of the tomato horn worm and it does look like it. Strangely, the tomato plants don't seem affected.

Just depends on which plant the moth lays it's eggs. Tomatoes, peppers and potatoes are all in the same family, they probably aren't picky. :o)

here's a good pic of the eggs... get them before they turn into a caterpillar

Here is a link that might be useful: THW eggs