Yesterday morning, while checking out my garden, I noticed one of my two Celebrity tomatoes looked a little “light” on top. The reason was obvious when I checked it out closer - there was a hornworm munching away on that plant. I looked and looked - no luck. It was super hot outside with a heat index over 100 - felt like you were breathing through a hot, wet washcloth, so I abandoned the search until it got cooler.
In the meanwhile, I was looking for a UV (black light) source like a flashlight - hornworms glow in the dark when lit up with UV light. That would be a sure fire way to find the thing; however, no UV light could be found in town - I even tried the pet store (UV light will light up pet urine, too). Dagnabbit.
It was raining lightly when I tried again to find the hornworm - cooler, since it was almost dusk. I took off my glasses (for distance) & got my nose about 6” from the plant. I’d read an article that hornworms are usually not deep in foliage, but on branches that are higher & they are closer to the ends. This article also suggested looking for hornworm poop & that would indicate an approximate location within 6” or so. No poop spotted. Drats. So I started in the area where the munching had occurred and started working my way out. I found the stinker within 2 minutes - yay! I hope it’s the only one .... to make sure, I’m ordering a UV flashlight for future checking. My SIL has had the top of a hot pepper munched out by a hornworm, too - don’t think she’s found hers yet.
This is not my first ‘rodeo’ with hornworms, I just haven’t had any for about 2 years. The very first one I ever had was already parasitized - I made the mistake of removing it from the garden since at the time I didn’t know what it was or what was going on. Upon research, I should have left it so the hatching braconid wasps could patrol the garden for more hornworms. I think I found 2 that year, both parasitized. The one I found yesterday had no wasp eggs on it, so it was in full “munching” mode.
Cool pic at the link:
Tomato Hornworms – finding them with UV light at night
https://giantveggiegardener.com/2016/09/20/tomato-hornworms-finding-them-with-uv-light-at-night/
I found my black light flashlight at Wal-Mart.