I've been waiting...and waiting...and waiting... for the emergence of seedlings, leaves, flowers, and fruits in some cases and now I'm waiting for the tomatoes to turn color. I noticed from afar today that one or two of them started to turn orange-ish! Yay for that!
After our walk with Jackson, we went over to my little garden to check it out. And I noticed bits of brown hexagonal shaped turds.... Then I saw lots (okay, one, then I saw two, then I saw another, and another - maybe 5 total) of these "little" buggers:
Eewww!
A little googling turns up that they are Tomato Hornworms. Does this make me a really gardner?
Does it make me less of a science person to be simultaneously disgusted and impressed by them? Their camouflage is amazing! (also, check out What's That Bug? for more interesting caterpillars! We got rid of them all (hopefully) before I could think that I should have gotten the camera!
This site also has some interesting information - they exist in a parasitic relationship with wasps!
I had been hoping that maybe I would find out that they were
Heimlich!
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3 comments:
I found one on my tomato plants last year and didn't know what it was. I put it in a jar without a lid. Through the night it managed to crawl out of the jar, down a full flight of steps off the deck and across 10 feet of patio back to the tomato plant. It's like some kind of homing device. Amazing. Frustrating, but amazing. It's also an eating machine.
yuck! they do become cool moths eventually but are sooo gross as worms!
i deleted your email with contact info...oops! and since i have a box for you....could you send it?
Really icky. That would be the end of my tomato growing career.
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