One of nature’s paradoxes is the inherent beauty of things that are deadly. Wild white berries on shrubs or trees should rarely (if ever) be eaten. The lush almost tropical leaves of New England poison ivy should never be touched. Never look directly into the sun during an eclipse.
So the other day when I was looking through my tomatoes I noticed that the top leaves were all gone. Too high for the groundhog, whose population I have eliminated (I believe based on the lack of recent damage.) What could it be? Looking more closely, I discovered little brown mounds on the lower leaves. Must be some type of creature but what?
As I fingered through the plants I nearly touched this long green, brightly colored caterpillar. It was beautiful. It had a neon green body with white and yellow stripes and dots on the side the looked liked a series of eyes. But what was it? I showed it to my wife, who quickly perused one of our many bug books and identified it as a tomato hornworm, which is one of the few bugs that will eat tomato leaves.
Now I had just about enough of things trying to attack my garden (see prior groundhog posts) and upon reading up on these bugs I quickly figured out that they are not my friends as they can devour a tomato plant fairly fast. After showing this bad boy to my wife and daughter I trashed it (literally) sending it onto its afterlife. Coming from the school that there is never just one pest in the garden, I went back and looked for any other brothers and sisters. I found a few. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that they were all carrying dozens of braconidae parasitoid wasps. Excitingly I brought a sample to show both my wife and daughter and they were horrified. “That is so gross,” said Sarah. “I’m getting nauseous.” My wife Juana was not too far behind not wanting to see the hornworm and its rice-lice-like passengers. “Get that out of my house!”
So I did retiring them to a patch of ground. In this case you want to keep the tomato hornworm alive as a farm for the wasp larvae, which will kill the worm and then hatch forming a natural, native colony that will keep future worms in check.
I thought about these worms yesterday at Green Chimneys cutting tomato stalks that were infected with bacterial speck. As I was removing infected leaves with one of my students I noticed that the top of one tomato plant was missing all its leaves. And sure enough, right under the missing leaves was a tomato hornworm full of parasitoid wasps.
“That is sooo cool,” said Beth, who was helping me prune the plants. She had been a bit withdrawn so far and this new discovery brought her out of her shell and put a big smile on her face. Tracy was nearby with a class collecting tomatoes to make her homemade salsa (which is quite delicious.) Never one to waste a garden pest, Tracy sat down and gave her class and my student a quick lesson on tomato hornworms, natural insect controls, and the circle of life for the parasitoid wasp. “It’s kind of like Alien vs. Predator,” said Tracy. “Except that it is for real.” I found a few more pairings, which I gave to Tracy who was becoming a kind of tomato hornworm earth mother. The kids loved it.
Eww, that's pretty scary. I can't see myself holding that! Kids are more willing to hold 'em because they think they're cool. Well, if they only knew.. Heh! =)
Posted by: Findewaa Gustavo | 12/28/2011 at 08:09 AM