We had the big green worm on our tomato plant. My wife killed it. I felt bad. Then Last night, there was another one. I have it in a bucket with all the tomato leaves it wants and onion stems to climb around on. It is a fascinating creature. Other than eating a few leaves and a little tomato, it is not harming anyone. I am happy to have this one, after my wife viciously killed the last one. No reason to kill something that is just trying to live. I'm kinda curious to see what kind of moth it becomes :)

OK, I haven't used Bt before but guess it's time. Will that work on ants and flea beetles too? I might as well put it on my brassicas to keep the cabbage loopers under control - they ate all my kale last year.

Follow up to last year's caterpillars... I ended up with 2 cocoons, which overwintered in a butterfly pavillion on my balcony. Both cocoons were in a birch tree, btw. I clipped the branches they were on and laid them in the pavillion, securing the pavillion so it didn't blow off the balcony. Yesterday one of them eclosed! I didn't even know it until I saw a huge moth hanging on the side of the house and realized the time was here! I ran upstairs and sure enough, there was a partially unfolded polyphemus hanging from the top of the mesh. I left it in the pavillion overnight because it wasn't fully open. This morning I found one outside the pavillion, waiting for the pretty girl to come out and "play". So I used a branch to fish her out of the enclosure and she and her new friend are basking in the sun on the deck. The other hasn't eclosed, but I'll be watching closely.

Yes the green hard to see caterpillars i think are the most common and have damaged my tomato plants a little bit before i caught them. You have to look at every inch of your plant thorougly because they can hide anywere and not be seen. I found a little green worm under my pepper plants leaf one time (not sure what it was) but havent seen them since. I just recently started seeing my tomato plants stems turn hollow so i looked it up and there is a different type of caterpillar that will make entry into the stem of your tomato plant and will eat it from the inside. I had to throw my plant away because it was completely hollow and dead. I also had a watermelon plant which did really good until it started getting infested with melon aphids on the backside of the leaves. I heard that lady bugs are really beneficial for your garden and they say an adult lady bug will eat up to 5000 aphids in its lifetime. I will try this method and will post how it works but i seen someone post about wasps helping with problems in their garden and would like to know more about how the wasps work.