The only time I've seen them is during the day, but they're night-timers, hiding under foliage in the day. People say go out at night with a blacklight to search and destroy, but searching through 10 foot tomato plants at night was fruitless. What I do now is spray with BT every 2-3 weeks shortly after my seedlings established outside so they never get a chance grow into big caterpillars. Having to spray THIRTY tomato plants sounds daunting though. In the future, you might try planting some flowering herbs and plants to attract a parasitic wasp that lays their eggs into them, which kills them and the eggs pupate into more wasps to help you search and destroy. If you find a hornworm like in the linked pic, those white eggs are the wasp's pupae. Don't kill the hornworm -- move it to a plant you don't care for and in a few days, the wasps will hatch and go searching for more caterpillars. Good luck. Kevin Here is a link that might be useful: brachonid wasp pupae

You seem to be an extremely thoughtful grower and interested in precise horticultural knowledge. Of course horticulture in not like mechanical engineering and there is never certainty when applying research to real-life situations. There are very many variables. Creating a bern for an establishing tree can be advantageous. It assures better water drainage on the raised soil, tends to stay loose and friable and warms up faster in the spring. In all but the coarsest soils it probably is a plus if the extra managment of mounds is OK and it doesn't bother you appearence-wise. Scion rooting can be a plus but many varieties and species can't easily dedifferentiate from trunk tissue to root tissue and occassionally can rot from having soil placed against non-rooting tissue as I understand it. This is difficult to evaluate in the field, and I will say that I've seen a lot of trees with soil and mulch piled against the trunks without root or rot over the years and in the forest trees mulch themselves indiscriminately, often piling rotting wet leaves agains the trunk with no apparent damage. For non-dwarfing rootstocks it is usually recommended they be planted with graft union right at ground level although I really don't know why. I just try to plant trees slightly above the level they grew at the nursery to allow for a little sinking and mulch. As far as what species and varieties are capable of rooting from trunk tissue you probably can only find out from your own experimentation (unless you get lucky here). I believe that the tendoncy of apples to root this way is highly exaggerated and only a small percentage of varieties planted below the graft union on dwarfing root-stock are apt to start scion rooting and become excessively vigorous. Harold Tukey, the late dwarf-fruit tree specialist, wrote in his classic "Dwarf Fruit Trees" in 1964, that most varieties grown at that time were incapable of easily rooting from buried scion wood. He also said that it used to be a common practice to purposely deeply bury cold-tender rootstocks like quince (used for pear dwarfing) to prevent them from freezing in harsh climates. The pears generally failed to root out above the buried graft union and the rootstock maintained its dwarfing affect. I would be interested in others to speak of hands-on experience with scion-rooting. Burrying the scion-wood is almost universally warned against when using dwarfing rootstock, but I wonder if it isn't 90% agri-legend.

You'll need more than a fence. A determined rabbit will tunnel underneath a concrete barrier to get to yummy pepper plants. I assume they will do the same for tomatoes, but my experience was with peppers. Years ago, I let my daughter's rabbit have the run of our backyard. No matter what I did, I couldn't keep it out of my pepper patch. I finally just gave up and waited until the rabbit died, which, fortunately for me, wasn't much long after. A neighbor's dog got into the yard and made short work of it. Oh, there was much bawling over that. But we had Big Jim peppers the next year! As for Granny Clampett and her roadkill cuisine, I have always been interested in making her special tonic. Which got me interested in this: Sasher says that by filling 15 percent of your car's gas tank with ethanol -- the corn-based alternative fuel -- and the rest with gasoline, you can bring down the price-per-gallon from $3 to about $2.40. You can make about five gallons of ethanol every hour from his stills, and it's not very difficult, he says. Yeast, sugar, corn and water are mashed together and left to ferment for two days or more. The mash is then brought to a boil, with the mash vapors rising into the still tower, where they are cooled and condensed into ethanol. Of course, if you don't add the ingredient that makes ethanol unfit for human consumption, you would find yourself with something else: 190 proof moonshine. "You can make moonshine with it," Sasher concedes, before adding with a grin, "It's against the law, though." Granny would be proud.

Blight is probably what is making people recommend not to reuse the potting mix. The spores that cause tomato blight (the late blight that crawls up from the bottom and makes the leaves turn brown and fall off) live in the soil and are spread to the leaves when rainwater splashes soil onto the bottom leaves. I have reused potting mix for tomatoes by mixing in some fresh compost and using it in the bottom half of the large pot. Then finish with fresh potting mix on top. My theory is the plant is less likely to get those spores if the reused soil is covered. My tomatoes always seem to get blight no matter what, but it was certainly no worse than usual. Compaction is a real problem so if you try this, use very coarse compost or some shredded wood like you would find in coarse potting mixes. Any leftover mix from last year ends up in my compost pile to (hopefully) re-equalize the spore population. I also mulch around tomatoes as soon as they are planted to reduce the soil splashing.