A sure sign of a tomato horn worm. The over crowdedness of my garden is a great exhibit of a place to hide. I spent close to 10 minutes to locate the first one. On to the rest of the plants - WHAT! Another plant with poop on it. Found this one in 10 minutes, took my eyes off of it for a few seconds and had to spend another 5 minutes finding it again. I am sure this not the last of them.
They are currently in a container on the table waiting for a bird to do it's job. (I hate squishing them). I figure if they make it back into the garden - 50 feet away - they deserve the tomato plant until I find them again.
Boy, gardening can really drive one buggy! I found a huge beetle this morning on the snow pea vines. It was a grapevine beetle over an inch long. Needless to say, after my grandson saw it. It was relocated :)
ReplyDeleteI've found, if you are very quiet, you can actually hear them chewing! I've often resorted to listening for them, as I find them really hard to see on large plants.
ReplyDeleteI have more tomato plants than I can handle and could designate one of the plants as the THW plant but I am not that brave. And yes you can hear them munch. These were only one inch long so I am not sure they were loud enough, plus all the power tools in the adjacent properties drown out the noise.
ReplyDeleteI never considered saving them for the birds to have a feast!
ReplyDeleteKind of you to feed the birds ;) I have heard of people making chicken platters assuming they have layers available. Just add bugs to plate and put in front of the 'girls.' I tend to toss critters onto the open lawn for the birds to collect.
ReplyDeleteOh, these are such buggers aren't they. I've nearly gone blind looking for them over the last few weeks. My hens love them! I haven't seen any lately....so maybe I'm winning. I'm doing better than last year anyway when they nearly wiped me out before I even knew I had them.
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