Squash Vine Borer Control Tomato Hornworm Control Pest management is complex, if you want to learn, a good place to start is here: Integrated Pest Management This lecture is presented in two parts. Each part is 90-minutes in length. Recorded in Sacramento County in California's Sacramento Valley, this lecture is by Mary Louise Flint, Ph.D., Director, IPM Education and Publications, UC Statewide IPM Project and Extension Entomologist & Cooperative Extension Specialist. Education: B.S. Plant Science, University of California, Davis Ph.D. Entomology, University of California, Berkeley Appointment: 100% Cooperative Extension Research Interests: Integrated pest management of landscape, agricultural and garden pests; biological control of arthropod pests; alternatives to pesticides; adoption of alternative practices by practitioners; innovative delivery of pest management information. Topics discussed in the Integrated Pest Management Lecture: * IPM references and resources * Preventing pest problems * Natural common enemies * Making less toxic pesticide choices * Controlling aphids, scales, caterpillars, coddling moths, tree borers, snails and slugs, and lawn insects. You can watch the programs now online: Just make sure you have Real Player installed or download it free. Integrated Pest Management Part1 90 minutes Integrated Pest Management Part 2 90 minutes You'll want to bookmark the following link to Professor Flint's Lab Research on: Controlling Pests in Gardens and Landscapes: Vegetables and Melons I promise you'll learn one or two things to put in your gardening bag of pest management arsenals. ;)

I Karyn, I recommended Horn Canna here awhile back. Most of their cannas are fairly easy to come by. I will be turning in an order shortly. If I can get another job.LOL The cannas at Karcheshy's are a little more unusual although they are pricey if your on Social Security like us. I'm nicking canna seeds as I type this post. I have several different ones I'll share with you when they come up. I have some unusual ones here in these seeds. I gathered them myself from a home the church owns. They are mostly pastel colors which I have none of at this time. I forgot which cannas you have Karyn, email me and I'll tell you what I have I can share with you. Alot of my cannas I grow for the foliage and not the blooms. The remind me of small banana trees kind of. I'm planting a ton of them down near the creekbed we just cleared out. Oh these little paths and walkways I'm creating are going to be the death of me yet. We're taking down some fencing and putting up another fence about 5 acres back. Today we dug all the holes for the post. Even with the post hole digger on the tractor it was very much like work when your our age. I keep telling George he's overdoing it but he will not listen. He just says if I'm going to die, I'm not going to die in the recliner just sitting. His heart must be doing alot better. Just 2 weeks ago he couldn't walk 5 ft without being exhausted. I'm going to set on him this evening and not let him do anymore. Mainly cause I've done all I can do today and I'm not a heart patient but at the rate he's going I will be before long. LOL Happy Gardening, Marian Love Marian

Those labels - unhelpful to a fault. Personally, that's one of the poorer common names the distributor/nursery can come up with, so thanks for bringing it up. Personally, I've spent only a little time around cattle, and they were of foreign origin (a Piedmont/Irish cross), but I still don't see how that name applies. It's a Euphorbia, one of the columnar ones and, in a case of convergent evolution, looks like a cactus but is in a completely different plant family; however, it should be treated as a columnar cactus, mostly. I'd ensure that the soil doesn't retain the water more than three days or so - these plants don't want wet feet. Keep it warm, keep it in some direct sun (but not full sun, IMO), feed it when it's warm with diluted general fertilizer every few weeks in the growing season, and repot it when it's root-bound. Don't water when it's cold and I believe this plant won't want to be outside in freezing temperatures. Additionally, be careful of getting the sap (it's milky latex) in mucous membranes especially and on your skin in general. Depending on the species and the person, it can be caustically uncomfortable. And speaking of the species, I should know (I've seen it before here) the name of it, but I don't remember it - someone else well-versed in the Euphorbiaceae will be able to tell you. It will eventually get big enough to want support of a structured nature, and some sort of trellis structure will be appreciated.

Your tomato/tobacco hornworm will eat the leaves of tomato, preferrably, though they can be found on other members of the Solanaceae family such as pepper and potato, though grudgingly. There are a few native weeds in this plant family, but you would have to look them up since I don't know where you live. Most of those plants are considered toxic....Solanaceae is the Nightshade family. That's pretty much it. They are not generalists but very host specific. The lids of water are useless. Spray the leaves occasionally with water. Captive caterpillars often succumb to disease if in the hands of someone who has not learned the rudiments of caring for them. That would be most of us! To go along with your philosophy, releasing them into the 'wild' without an appropriate food source would be cruel. They would suffer a slow death of starvation. I suggest that you either sacrifice your own tomato plant, or get some more tomato plants, or serve them up to the birds in your garden by placing them in the bird bath or feeder. That would be a good thing to do, right? In nature, there are many pests and parasites that help control these particular caterpillars. Very few of the many that are hatched actually make it to adulthood.