Yet here’s the most important reason to let the homely hornworm live to see another day: he’s a valuable garden helper on two counts. Thus, since they aren’t really making a dent in my eagerly-awaited crop, I don’t see any point in killing them. Second, they always do this late in the season, and they mostly strip the leaves off the tops of tomato plants that have finished growing, A few sometimes also nibble holes in the tomatoes themselves, but this doesn’t happen regularly. Why play Lady Bountiful? Several reasons.įirst, unlike some gardeners who experience serious infestations of these caterpillars, I’ve never once had more than half a dozen hornworms appear in my garden. Then, satiated, I know he will vanish from the veggie plot as quietly and mysteriously as he came. Instead, I leave Manduca quinquemaculata (to use his tongue-twisting Latin name) to meander around in my tomato plants as he pleases, happily chomping away. Nowadays, my impulse is no longer to play executioner with a brick or a bucket of soapy water.
He often shows up unexpectedly on my tomato plants at this time of year– and it’s always a surprise.Ī welcome one, too. I’ve actually become quite fond of this freakish little fellow which - at 10 centimetres long - is the largest garden caterpillar we are likely to come across in Ontario. Better kill it.”īut please, folks, resist the urge. Then we think nervously: “How disgusting. Most of us recoil in shock when encountering one for the first time. And he has weird orange “eyes” that seem to stare at you.Īt first glance, the tomato hornworm looks like something out of a horror movie. He’s big, green and fat as a finger, with an alarming spike on his rear end. Correction – September 25, 2017: The tomato hornworm turns into the five-spotted hawk (or sphinx) moth, not, the beautiful hummingbird moth, shown in the photo.
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