# Gaah! Tomato Hornworms! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 8, 2010, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaah-tomato-hornworms/549570 "2010-08-08T02:21:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2010, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaah-tomato-hornworms/549570/21 "2010-08-08T19:03:37Z")
> [@miss\_elizabeth](#): > > Well, I just caught a couple about a week ago and had the exact same thought, but for whatever reason I looked it up to be sure it was ok before I fed them to my (my son’s, really) lizard, and found that they concentrate something from the plants in their body which makes them poisonous to the bearded dragons. Tomatoes aren’t good for them either. [Solanine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanine) presumably. One or two might not hurt, especially as they’re not _made_ of tomato, but it’s not a great idea, and glad you were prepared. Lightning bugs/glow worms etc are another thing you should never feed them. ---
**Author:** ![MacTech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MacTech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacTech)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaah-tomato-hornworms/549570/22 "2010-08-09T02:19:44Z")
Well, no more hornworms tonight, but I’m sure they’ll be back soon enough, they’re like the Terminator, they feel no fear, no pity, no pain, and they absolutely, positively will not stop, until all my tomatoes are defoliated… Last night, I did grant a stay of execution to three of them, I have them imprisoned in a large Bell 3 pint jar, and they are being fed a limited diet of tomato plant leaves, mainly because I want to understand the life cycle of my enemy, so I can better combat them, plus, I want to see what the sphinx moth they metamorphize into looks like this morning, the jar that was stuffed full of tomato leaves was absolutely bare, they devastated the supplied leaves overnight… I need to find a way to attract some Bracnoid parasitic wasps to my garden so they can parasitize the hornworms ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaah-tomato-hornworms/549570/23 "2010-08-09T02:50:35Z")
Out of curiosity couldn’t you find them in the day time? Where would a tomato hornworm go during the day? I’ve picked some off, and they are large and not that fast. Are they on the plant all the time and just camouflage, or do they leave the plant during the day and come back to it in the evening ? ---
**Author:** ![MacTech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MacTech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacTech)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaah-tomato-hornworms/549570/24 "2010-08-09T03:04:44Z")
generally, they hide under the leaves, and my tomato patch (thicket, really) is incredibly thick and crowded, the hornworms have an abundance of hiding spots ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaah-tomato-hornworms/549570/25 "2010-08-09T06:09:02Z")
When I was a kid, we used to make little funeral pyres out of twigs and newspapers. It was fun watching the little bastards twitch around while burning. It’s amazing I didn’t turn out to be some kind of sociopath. ---
**Author:** ![FallenAngel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@FallenAngel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FallenAngel)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaah-tomato-hornworms/549570/26 "2010-08-09T21:30:23Z")
Hijack When I was in 8th grade biology, we had an assignment to collect and ID as many different types of insects as possible. My buddy Mike got a pretty good collection together. He had access to lots of different spaces since he lived on the outskirts of town and his place butted up to a woods. Unfortunately, Mike also found a tomato hornworm and dropped it in his collection box on Saturday. On Monday when he got to school it had eaten all the other (dead) bugs. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Duality](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.duality/32/4098_2.png) [@Mr.Duality](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Duality)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaah-tomato-hornworms/549570/27 "2010-08-10T02:11:02Z")
> [@Acid\_Lamp](#): > > > [@Mr.Duality](#): > > > > If they are like tobacco hornworms, they are delicious. Tastes like shrimp. > > Wait, what? Really? Really. I had some at the University of Wyoming Insect Cook Off about 11 or 12 years ago. Also, grasshoppers taste like oysters. Mealworms don’t taste like much of anything. Insects have a higher percentage of usable protein than beef, chicken or pork. ---
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaah-tomato-hornworms/549570/28 "2010-08-10T02:23:51Z")
Diatomaceous earth? ---
**Author:** ![Hockey\_Monkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a183cd/32.png) [@Hockey\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hockey_Monkey)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaah-tomato-hornworms/549570/29 "2010-08-10T02:58:15Z")
Those things are the devil. I was made to pick them off the plants by hand as a child. I can’t bring myself to hardly look at one now, much less touch it. Gah! They make me squicky. ---
**Author:** ![Labrador\_Deceiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7c8e57/32.png) [@Labrador\_Deceiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labrador_Deceiver)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaah-tomato-hornworms/549570/30 "2010-08-10T13:27:19Z")
Corn earworms here. I’m finding them on the tomatoes, cucumbers and okra. They can be very hard to see when they’re small, but they generally don’t do as much damage as hornworms. ---
**Author:** ![Encinitas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@Encinitas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Encinitas)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaah-tomato-hornworms/549570/31 "2010-08-10T18:57:18Z")
I pick hornworms off my plants and flick them up on the roof for the birds to finish off. One time I missed and tossed two worms through an open window into my Mom’s bedroom!:eek: ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaah-tomato-hornworms/549570/32 "2010-08-10T19:52:04Z")
> [@Jenaroph](#): > > > [@Shayna](#): > > > > You could also try sprinkling cornmeal around the base of all your plants. Hornworms eat it, but can’t digest it, so they actually explode! Saves you the trouble of having to smash them yourself. > > No offense but this sounds too much like “don’t throw rice at weddings because birds eat it and their stomachs swell up and they die” to believe without evidence. In googling around the only place I’m finding it is on home remedy and organic gardening sites, which all use virtually the same phrasing so it looks like they all copied it from one source. > > Has anyone who’s done this ever found an exploded hornworm with cornstarch goo splattered around it in their garden? Well, I’ve seen suggestions to use \*\*self-rising \*\*flour as a treatment for cutworms. Sprinkle self-rising flour around the plants, cutworm comes and eats his fill, and supposedly, in the morning you will find a king-sized dead cutworm. Perhaps someone got their baking supplies confused? Also: Cornmeal is used in the garden as a fungicide in the soil. Another possible source of confusion. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2010, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaah-tomato-hornworms/549570/33 "2010-08-10T21:35:03Z")
This may be less appealing to some than squishing, crushing and burning - but tomato hornworms can be controlled by using BT spray (Bacillus thuringiensis). BT toxin is ingested by the worms, they rapidly stop feeding and then die. Hand picking is best if you have a small tomato patch. However, I also get cabbage loopers on my brussels sprouts plants, so the BT is mainly used to control them. This stuff is highly specific for caterpillars and will not harm beneficial non-caterpillar bugs (there are different types of BT, so get the one(s) labeled for use against hornworms). I sprayed BT last night on my Brugmansias, after seeing some large holes in leaves suspicious for hornworm attack. You definitely would not want to feed lizards any hornworms that had been found eating Brugmansia (like Datura, it has toxic foliage). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaah-tomato-hornworms/549570.md?page=1)