Hey there,

We grew nicotiana out in Seattle and our experience was that it thrived on neglect. Beautiful white flowers that smelled incredible in the evening. I mean, incredible. We're near Raleigh and plan on planting a bunch this year.

We really worked the soil we planted them in - great compost, etc. Then we just let 'em go.

they do very well here, sometimes becoming perennial. i have a deep purple and white with apple blossom back color that are perennial. both smell heavenly but only in the eves. matter f fact, those particluar ones i couldn't get rid of if i wanted; they seem to resprout form any scrap of root left. but not all perennialize. well worth growing.

Not fair! Everytime I tried to grow them, the hornworms took over and they looked ratty. I gave up. How do you keep the hornworms away?
Dana

you know, i haven't ever noticed the hornworms finding them. they get my tomatoes and peppers no matter where i plant them, and the peppers have been quite close to some of the nicos in the past. i've found them feeding on other odd things like sunflowers and butterfly bush before, but my nicotiana have not shown damage from them. something gets my brug each year- i assumed it was in the smae family as hornworms. they do get beat up from heavy heavy rains sometimes, looking like hail's gone over the leaves with small tears. and they tend to flop as they get taller, but then head up towards the sun again at a right angle. mine aren't the neatest looking plants (they are rangier than the compact cell pack kinds), but i love the flowers and scent. they meander through the bed and bloom clear til frost. i can bring some of the white if you want for the swap, dana. just let me know. tam

Thanks, Tammy, but I'll pass on it. Mine have always been completely ravaged by hornworms. In fact it seemed I had more hornworms on my tomatoes when I grew nicotiana, but that was probably just coincidence. We have an inordinate amount of hornworms around here anyway. I've always wondered if maybe it had something to do with the tobacco fields across from our neighborhood.

The biggest problem with growing any of the flowering tobaccos in this area is the amount of field tobacco diseases and pest around. A lot of new homes are built on old farmland and some of the diseases can live forever in the soil. Many gardeners struggle with basic plants like tomato because of the disease issue.

My favorite is Nicotiana sylvestris (I'm guessing at the spelling), only comes in white to my knowledge, about 4 feet tall, long tubular flowers that smell up the entire neighborhood with the smell of Hawaii, oh and their mostly night fragrant which is nice when you come home from work.

Most of them are very easy from seed. Most require normal garden soil and watering. Plenty of them sorta always have a few yellowing leaves while the top of the plant is looking pretty (but the bright colored forms tend to be cleaner in that respect - either all green or suddenly all yellow). They can survive our winters in Raleigh but it seems to weaken them in my yard. Every other year or so I have to start over with stronger plants.

The best thing about them by far is the way they attract those hummingbird moths in the evening.

The tobacco and tomatoe hornworms get my tobacco too but the plants grow back and rebloom -- part of the price of seeing those beautiful moths I guess. I didn't have a problem with the hornworms until I started growing tomatoes near the garden.

So John, do you think it is because of the nearby tobacco fields that we have so many hornworms then? That's what I've always suspected anyway. I've had problems with tomato diseases too and have to rely mostly on resistant hybrids. This year I'm trying some in homemade "earthboxes" to see how those do. But our property itself couldn't have been used to grow tobacco for many years at least, since it was completely wooded when we bought it. But the hornworms sure make good turtle food though! Skimmer loves hornworms.

Sara loves the hummingbird moths. I grow a lot of flowers out by the pool that they frequent. They really like my purple verbena.

yes, dana, i'd say you have hornworms because of that field. but i'd be cautious about feeding the hornworms to skimmer, though. ours like them too, but then when i was on one of the mulberry/silkworm info sites that also sold hornworm eggs for feeder insects, they specifically said not to feed hornworms solanacea family plants or they'd be poisonous. didn't say anything about tobacco, but it has lots of poisons, and actually make s a good bug spray. we stopped after that or only gave them little ones occasionally. just fyi, one of ours adores lawn grubs, so if you haven't tried them, it's worth trying.

i have trouble with tomato diseases, too and have had the best luck with them in large tubs with fresh soil. i'd bet your earthboxes will work well. some of the tobacco diseases affect tomatoes, too (notably tobacco mosiac virus), and i don't know if they could be spread by air or birds, but i wouldn't be too surprised. they say even stray butts can spread it to your prop. strangely, the nicos seem to be mostly immune to whatever bothers my tomatoes, so i guess it isn't tmv in my case.

i like the moths, too, but i kill every hornworm i catch anyhow. i know a few escape each time since we see the moths, and we always have more hornworms the next year. i figure we're keeping things in about the right balance. did you know the worms click and squeal to scare you?

I have never heard them click or squeal! That's cool. I didn't know caterpillars could make noise. I read that too about feeding the hornworms, but they hadn't hurt her before, so I figured they were immune to it like they are supposedly immune to poison mushrooms. I'll be careful though. She also likes cabbage worms. I plant cabbage family plants just to attract the worms to feed her.

The tobacco field is for sale now. I'm not looking forward to it being developed into a bunch of houses, but maybe it will have the silver lining of alleviating some of my tomato problems.

I bought this large expensive book on garden pests and I was surprised to see that there are pages and pages of various hornworm species that all look exactly alike, each with a different host plant. Tobacco and tomatoes and brugmansia and petunias are all related and common in this area. Moths can fly quite a distance so it wouldn't surprise me if the caterpillars are hatching from eggs layed by moths flying over from the fields.

When I said hummingbird moths I meant the smaller green ones most often called bumblebee moth. But I like all of them.

It helps to let one large caterpillar remain on your plants - the really big ones (referred to as 'Shamu - the killer worm') are most often parasitized by wasps so you want to keep them around to build up a healthy parasitic wasp population.

That's what I was meaning too with regard to the hummingbird moths. The little guys. I think they're called hummingbird clearwings. Those are the ones Sara likes so much.

I looked up the moths I was talking about and found out the clearwing and the bumblebee moth are different moths. I thought they were the same thing. I think we might have both. There really are a bunch of them.

i don't kill any that have the white rice pupal sacs on them, but they are the only ones i spare. the big buggers that are eating go because they do too much damage too fast. i see a good many with the wasp larvae, so the balance must be ok. i know there's a zillion different hornworms. the biggest we ever found was on the sunflower, and it was about 7 or 8" long couple yrs ago. we kept it to let it pupate, but it died. ditto an interestingly patterned one we found last fall. that one started to pupate, but eventually died. it had a markedly different pattern, but still had the horn & body form of the hornworms. no idea what he was eating- we found it wandering on the ground, probably to pupate.

i think the clearwings are in the same family as the hornworms (but my kids messed up my butterfly/moth book so i can't look it up to verify). they are amazing to watch. i saw one of those before i ever saw a hummer as a kid and was sure it was one! at our fair plot last year we had the pleasure of watching a newly hatched sphinx moth supping on our datura flowers. it was amazing. he was still so new he let the kids handle him. it was chilly and i think that slowed down his metabolism a lot, too.

dana, try to pick up a good sized one and it will throw it's head back and forth and click and squeal. often they make the most noise when they are hanging on for dear life to whatever you are trying to pull them off of. our turtles will eat some cabbage worms, but not tons. i guess they get tired of the taste. i'd heard that about shrooms, but haven't worked up the nerve to offer them anything i know isn't edible. so far they've turned up their beaks. boogers. they think worms and mealworms come from the sky, since the kids drop them in front of them (they startle if a hand appears). it almost looks as though they are begging when they're hungry.

another bug that makes noise is the betsy beetle /bess bugs/patent leather bugs- they squeak. they look fierce but are harmless and the kids love them.

Tammy, do you remember where you got your first seeds/plants of this? I have wanted to grow this for years.

Carla

guessing, but probably pinetree. if you're close enough to come to the raleigh swap i could bring you plants and save you the trouble of starting seed. just let eknow. tammy