Anna,

When growing tomatoes I always had extra plants grown somewhere away from the garden for the hornworm cats. My daughter when younger loved to search for them and them move them to the "safe" place.

randy

Love it, and John Fisher will love having you in SE Oklahoma to record new lepidoptera for our state lists!

I will probably have to do something like that if I grow more. But seeing as though I only have two plants (I'm the only one that likes tomatoes) I don't have any to spare!

Mr. Fisher and I have already become acquainted. He's been very helpful!

Love the dialogue between you and your teen! In the typical instructions for composting, you're told not to throw tomatoes into the compost pile because of volunteers. (If there's been disease, I don't compost them). I don't mind the volunteer tomato plants that come up in the compost because when I grow tomatoes, and I find hornworms on them, I just move them to the volunteers.

Also, quite frequently, they are parasitized--those I usually destroy.

I've decided there's no such thing as a baby tomato hornworm. They're always huge by the time I spot them. I find very few even though I just let them be. By the time I find them, they're nearly through eating anyway and my tomato plants are just volunteers. I used to wonder if the hornworms would multiply like crazy if I didn't spray my tomatoes but that hasn't been the case so far.

I have lots of volunteer cherry tomatoes growing here and there in my flower gardens and along our fence. They're tough and can compete with weeds and still manage to produce plenty of cherry tomatoes for green salads. Everyone should grow them even if you don't have a vegetable garden. They require no spraying and are one of the easiest edibles to grow.

In the interest of giving John something to watch pupate, I'm sacrificing lower leaves to the cat...I swear, the things I do for my boy.

Anna

A great substitute for tomato plants, is the Datura (same family, Solanaceae). I have D. inoxia, which is a native plant to Oklahoma, and one that the Manducas readily accept as an alternative to Lycopersicon. We have many more M. sextas (Tobacco Hornworm or six spotted hawk moth) than M. quinquemaculatas (aka Tomato Hornworm or five spotted hawk moth). They are fun to raise.

Susan