Discovered Some Serious Tomato Plant Damage

I check on the tomato plants daily.  Despite the afternoons still in the low to mid 90's, the tomato plants have done quite well.  In fact, I was concerned that due to the heat, they wouldn't set fruit.  I had read that they will have problems setting fruit if temperatures exceed 85 degrees Fahrenheit.  Well, that rule isn't set in stone as I'm seeing fruit all over the place.

But I'm seeing something else, too.  I walked down the tomato rows this afternoon and spotted this!

And here is it's neighbor!  What in the wide world of sports is going on?

Well, I have a pretty good idea.  It looks like damage from a tomato horn worm.  I decided I would carefully inspect each plant.  The tomato horn worm's appetite rivals mine.  It can eat a lot in just a short sitting.  The plants weren't like this yesterday.  So I started at the first plant, looking all over.  And then I spotted the perpetrator!  Can you see how camouflaged it is?  It blends right in to the stalk and leaves.

I snatched the hornworm off the plant with the quickness.  You can see how it got it's name.  It has a red barb on his rear end.  I read somewhere that they don't sting or bite, but I wasn't taking any chances.  It wasn't happy with me for removing it from it's lunch.

I'm sure there are more, so I began to go through the plants one by one.  Here's another one!

And another!

And yet still another.  In all, I picked seven of them off the plants, all except one were as fat as my index finger.

Tomato hornworms feed on members of the nightshade family, namely tomatoes and eggplant.  Speaking of names, the hornworm's scientific name is Manduca quinquemaculata.  But I can't pronounce that name.  I choose to simply call them... Chicken food!  I tossed each one over the fence and watched the birds quickly devour them.  Please be assured I watched until they were digested.  I don't want them to make their way back into the garden.

I'll check the plants again tomorrow for any fresh signs of damage.

The Early Worm

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

In the afternoons, I like to walk down the rows of the garden and just observe.  If you aren't watchful, you may miss harvesting a cucumber until it is overripe and yellow.  You may fail to see that your beans need watering.  You have to have a keen eye.  Sometimes things you need to see in order to take action are camouflaged, hidden to the eye.

While walking down the row of Cherokee Purple tomatoes, I noticed that one of the tomato leaves had been clipped off.  It appeared to be done by a very hungry pest.  I had my suspicions as to who did this, but I had to find the culprit to make a positive identification.

Tomato leaves clipped off

Sometimes you have to pause and do your best job at being a detective.  The tomato leaves directly below the leaf that had been eaten had a tell tale sign.  Look at the poop on the leaves.  We are gathering evidence at a good pace now.

I followed the eaten leaves, moving slowly with my eyes, knowing at this point, that I was looking for a perpetrator that was green, colored this way in order to blend in to the foliage on the tomato plant.  Aha!  Found this big, fat dude, and it was just as I expected...

A tomato hornworm!  Can you see in the photo below why he is called a "horn" worm?  This guy is the larvae of a hawkmoth.

He looks frightening, but he doesn't scare me much.  I picked him up with my thumb and forefinger and tossed him over the garden fence.  The big, fat, green worm made a nice meal for a Barred Rock Hen that came across it.  The hen grabbed it quickly and took off running, wishing to go to a quiet place and enjoy this delectable meal.

I continued to look through the tomato leaves and found two more tomato worms that quickly became tasty morsels for the chickens to snack on.

The early bird got the early worm.

The Dreaded Tomato Hornworm

Jonah 4:7  But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered.

The context of the verse above is that Jonah was sent to the city of Nineveh to tell the people to repent of their wickedness or their city would be destroyed.  When the inhabitants of Nineveh turned from their wicked ways and repented, God spared the city.  This angered Jonah.

Jonah found a plant (not a tomato plant, but a castor oil plant) and sat under it. This plant provided shade for Jonah and he enjoyed it.  Then comes the verse highlighted above.  Without the plant, Jonah was in great discomfort and longed for death.

God spoke to Jonah and questioned why Jonah could muster compassion for a mere plant that he did not tend nor cause to grow, but he could not show compassion for 120,000 people that God created, loved and desired His best for their lives?

The chapter ends there.  How could Jonah answer that?  Yes people are far more important than plants.

The photo above is one I took yesterday of a tomato hornworm.  He looks pretty ferocious, doesn't he?  He is about as big around and as long as your index finger, with "V" shaped markings along his side and with a scary looking spike on his rear end.  He has an appetite as ferocious as his appearance, too.  He is able to eat all the upper leaves off of a tomato plant faster than poop through a goose.  His coloration camouflages him so that he can do his dirty work for a while. Pretty soon, though, the leafless tomato plant, along with big caterpillar poop on the leaves below, alerts you to yet another nemesis in the garden.

I just pull them off with my fingers.  They aren't easy to pry off the tomato vine.  It is as if they have suction cups on their feet.  Finally, I pull him free from the fence and toss him over the fence to 100 hens waiting with bated breath for the fat, juicy, tomato nourished, delicious morsel.  The early bird does indeed get the worm and scurries off to try to gobble the caterpillar down without having to share it with another hen.  If I would have allowed him to grow, he would have eventually turned into a hawkmoth, but if I did that, I wouldn't have much of a tomato plant left, would I?  I pulled 3 off yesterday and another two the day prior.  One must be vigilant with caterpillars around, not to mention the squirrels we mentioned yesterday.

I have tended for the tomato plants since January of this year.  Right now I am battling squirrels, tomato hornworms, and stink bugs for a harvest.  It is not easy.  I do have compassion for the tomato plant (and contempt for the squirrels, hornworms, and stink bugs).  But it is just a plant.  People need compassion and need grace extended.  Just like Jonah at the end of Chapter 4, I need to examine my heart.

A Crime in the Garden

The tomatoes are enjoying the warm temperatures and are growing by leaps and bounds.  I’ve put up three levels of the Florida Weave trellising technique we discussed in AN EARLIER POST.  Every day I make it my business to walk up and down the rows of the various varieties of indeterminate heirloom tomatoes we have planted and scout for pests and also to pinch off the suckers that grow in the “elbows” of the tomato plant.

I saw something on a row of tomatoes that made me stop right in my tracks and scowl.  Would you take a look at this?:

The scene of the crime

Some creature absolutely clipped all of the top of the plant off, snipping the leaves off in a manner that would make a professional pruner green with envy.  It was a precision job, no doubt, and my task at hand was to locate the perpetrator and punish him to the fullest extent allowed by law.  But locating the perp was going to be difficult.  Oftentimes fugitives from the law are crafty and use means of evasion such as camouflage to hide in plain sight while they continue to inflict their destructive vandalism and theft.  A criminal's greed is often their downfall.

Evidence off the crime

I patiently began to search from the uppermost parts of the damaged tomato plant and inspected every nook and cranny as my eyes shifted lower in the canopy.  Aha!  The chase ensued and ended just as quickly as I spotted the perp.  There was no need to call for backup as the criminal was obese and very slow moving.  He was unashamed in his crime and continued eating the tomato plant as I observed him in the act - caught red-handed.  I was right when I first saw the damage as to who the perpetrator was – A Tomato Hornworm!

Mugshot of the Miscreant

Enough of this foolishness!  The long arm of the law reached out and grabbed him.  He was soft and fat and was easy to subdue, but hard to pull off the plant.  He continued to eat and his sticky legs clung to the tomato.  The perp was read his Miranda rights and brought in for questioning.  Forensic evidence of his crime was seen all over him.  He waived his rights to an attorney.  It is time to get him off the streets and to justice.

Long Arm of the Law

The tomato hornworm was given a speedy trial and as the verdict was read, the gallery sighed with relief as he was found guilty on all counts by the honorable judge presiding over the case.  The sentencing phase of the criminal proceeding began shortly thereafter and it didn’t take long at all for the judge to read out the sentence.  Due to the heinous nature of his crime and no doubt a repeat offender, he was deemed a menace to society.  Unable to be rehabilitated, the judge was left with only one means of punishment.  The death penalty!  It was to be administered quickly.

The executioner was called.  The tomato hornworm didn’t get a last meal as he was already full of tomatoes.  His last words were unintelligible.  This executioner was skilled in her job and wasted no time in carrying out the sentence.  Like a sharpened guillotine, her beak collided with the hornworm’s rotund body and onlookers in the gallery gasped in horror as gelatinous, dark-green bodily fluids oozed from the entry point of the executioner’s beak, exacting swift retribution for his criminal acts.

The Executioner

The criminal was pronounced dead at 5:52 pm and will no longer carry out his misdeeds on the unsuspecting public.  Law enforcement will continue to patrol the neighborhood as sometimes copycat crimes will occur.  Over time, peace and tranquility will again find its place on the tomato rows in the garden and the death, destruction and dismemberment will be forgotten.  We will, however, remain vigilant. 

    

The Predator Becomes the Prey

Yesterday afternoon I was slogging through my water-logged garden, putting the next strands of baling twine up on my Florida Weave trellising method that we discussed in previous posts.  The hay mulched tightly around the base of the plants is doing an absolute stellar job of thwarting any weed growth.

The huge amount of rain has many of my tomato plants to be in distress with yellowed leaves on some, stunted growth, and just sick looking plants on the lowest portion of the rows.  After this weekend, I think the rain chances will diminish and man, plant, and beast around Our Maker's Acres Family Farm will rejoice!

In addition to the enormous amount of rainfall, there are other predators at work in the tomato patch. The photo below is out of focus, but you can see that something has eaten all the stems and leaves off of the tomato plant in the foreground. Whatever it was, it sure was hungry!  I knew I just had to find the culprit before it consumed the entire plant.

Who's eating our Tomato Plants?

We don't use any pesticides in our garden, so it comes down to me hunting for the pesky perpetrator and eliminating him from the garden.  In looking at the damage, I knew it wouldn't be hard to find. He would have to be a fat caterpillar to engage in such a feast.  Sure enough, I spotted the green worm, gorging himself on our tomato plants - A perfectly healthy specimen of the Tomato Hornworm!

Why, it's a fat Tomato Hornworm!

Well, he wasn't giving up without a fight.  I tried to pry him from his place at the "supper table," and he clung to the tomato plant for dear life.  Finally, I had him loose.  The photo below shows why he's called the Hornworm.  You can see the red horn protruding from one end.  He's all bark and no bite, though and he's incapable of stinging you with it, but it's still kind of scary.  I dropped him when he reached around.

How the Hornworm got his name

Tomato Hornworms are the larval stage of the Five-Spotted Hawkmoth.  Here's what they look like:

Image Credit

The biggest predator to the tomato hornworm is the wasp.  Wasps apparently feed on hornworms.  However, I'm not likely to keep wasps around to control them biologically.  I kill every wasp nest I see because I don't like getting stung.  So how will I control the hornworms?  Well, I'll pick them off and give them to some creatures I keep around that probably like eating hornworms more than wasps do - Chickens!!

I tossed that fat hornworm over the garden fence and the Rhode Island Red in the middle grabbed that fat boy and took off running with all the other hens in chase. She gobbled it down with the quickness!  I continued scouting for hornworms on the other tomato rows and did find three more of them.  They weren't quite as fat, but they still proved to be tasty morsels for my fine, feathered friends.