The Adventures of a Tomato Hornworm

One cool and crisp late October day last year, my kids and I were ripping out what was left of our tomato plants. You would think this would be an easy task, but our tomato plants did exceptionally well last year and those roots ran pretty deep! So, as I was yanking and tugging at those stubborn plants, my kids were running around the yard and looking at all the plants that were already pulled out. One of the kids saw a caterpillar-like wormy thing (I believe that is the scientific name for it!) on the tomato plant and showed it to me. Of course this made us wonder what it was, so off to the internet we went! We found that this was a Tomato Hornworm. The reason this caterpillar is referred to as the Hornworm is because of the "horn" that is located on its rear end. According to Wikipedia, the Hornworm feeds off of the tomato plant, but is not particularly fond of marigolds. Since these creatures are not very helpful to anyone's garden, I think investing in a couple of marigolds to plant around tomato plants would be a good investment! The caterpillar eventually turns into the Five-spotted Hawkmoth. We happen to have a book about butterflies and moths (A Golden Junior Guide - Butterflies and Moths), so we found that a Five-spotted hawkmoth is a type of Sphinx moth that is referred to as Hawkmoth because of its ability to fly up to 35 miles an hour! That's pretty fast for a little moth!

We took the Hornworm and put it in a bug catcher to study it further. We also gave the caterpillar some tomato plant and leaves along with some green tomatoes for food. This little guy lived in our bug catcher for 2 weeks! The problem was that these Hornworms have a natural enemy that preys on them. It's called a parasitic Braconid Wasp. It's "parasitic", which means that it lives off of another creature. A wasp had stung this Hornworm and laid its eggs inside of it. The eggs hatch into baby wasps (larvae) and they live off of the Hornworm, literally eating it alive! Gross, I know. It's like something out of a science fiction movie! The larvae the formed cocoons on the Hornworm. You can see the cocoons that the the larvae formed here. The new wasps eventually emerge from the cocoons and they will help to keep the other Hornworms from ruining your garden! The wasps leave what is left of the Hornworm's body and fly off. Unfortunately, the wasps that hatched from the Hornworm's cocoons that we had did not make it through the cold weather. But if you see a Hornworm with those white spikes sticking out of its back, it's best to leave it alone because the wasps will kill off the Hornworm and also any other Hornworms they find. That way, you can still enjoy your tomatoes without having to worry about any caterpillars eating your garden clean!

The photos I included through the links are not my own. We didn't even think about getting photos of our Hornworm. I guess we were just so amazed at all that was happening that we completely forgot! I ended up taking the Hornworm and its "guests" (the parasitic wasps) in the bug catcher to my kids' school to show it off and tell them about it. They thought it was pretty "cool" and enjoyed learning about it. 

We really enjoyed learning about our Hornworm and now we know that it isn't something we want in our garden. I think I will take more of those parasitic Braconid Wasps instead. They will keep our garden healthy and safe from some pests. Next time you eat a tomato, you can thank a wasp for doing its job so well!

Cheryl

New Adventures in Your Own Backyard

Have you ever walked out in your backyard, or down your street, or around your block, and discovered a new bug or plant? Did you ever wonder why certain things happen in nature? I sure have! My family and I love to explore our surroundings and usually will find some new or odd thing that we have not seen before! Luckily, in this day and age, we have the internet at our fingertips to help us figure out some of these perplexing things! (If you are EXTREMELY lucky, like we are, you also have neighbors who are something like a walking and talking Wikipedia about all things in nature and they will share their knowledge with you!)

Whenever my kids are outside, they are searching for some type of bug. We have discovered many, many bugs in our backyard. We have been fortunate enough to see a horned tomato worm (that had been stung by a parasitic wasp that laid its eggs inside the unfortunate worm), a praying mantis, cicadas, soldier beetles, caterpillars, butterflies, moths, bees, hornets, paper wasps (and their huge nest!) grasshoppers, crickets, pill bugs, box elder bugs, numerous spiders, an especially creepy, green-fanged, hairy jumping spider (who built his home in our mailbox no less!) and many, many more bugs than I can even mention!  In our house, we can't just find a bug and not learn more about it. We get pretty curious when we see these little creatures crawling and flying around, so we head over to our neighbors, or to the internet to check it out.

In this blog, I hope to be able to share some of the awesome things we have discovered over the years. Maybe it will get you searching your own backyard too! One thing that we have learned is that the backyard has many treasures just waiting to be found! The more you get to know who and what shares your environment, the more you will appreciate the beauty of the world around you. Despite those crazy green fangs (and me not being too fond of spiders), that jumping spider was pretty amazing! We ended up taking him safely out of our mailbox and putting him into one of our many bug catchers, and taking him for a walk down our street. Yes, although he was amazing, we did not want him to come back to his mailbox home. So, we took him to live in the very nice, peaceful field that is at the end of our block. We hope he was able to find a nice home that didn't entail scaring a postal carrier half-to-death!

As I go along in this new adventure of blogging, I hope you will join me in learning. Remember that nature doesn't stop in the fall and winter (although a lot of it may hibernate), so I plan on finding some pretty fun and interesting things to post for you all during these colder months! If you ever have any things that you question from your own backyard, please feel free to share them with me. I love to learn about the world around us, but especially those things I can find in my own backyard adventures!

Cheryl