There are lots of possibilities....from assorted beetles to caterpillars to slugs to earwigs to...well, you get the idea. A good time to inspect is in the evening after the sun has gone down. Take a flashlight with you and report back! ;-)

Ok, so I went out with a flashlight tonight to see what was going on. Didn't see much but I did see small white specks. Are these aphids? What do I do, if anything. I don't really want to use a lot of chemicals b/c my young son plays around them.

So I've seen two wormy looking catepillars on these plants too. They were hard to pick off (of course it didn't help that I was a little squimish!). They were about an inch long. One was white and one was pinkish. They weren't fuzzy. Any ideas? What do I do?

Petunias are in the same group as Tomatos and Potatoes and Tobacco - all of which are poisonous (somewhat) so the critters that eat them tend to only eat them.

Sweet Taters are in the Morning Glory group and they have their own set of toxic chemicals (bad, but not as bad as those other guys!)- there are more pests that eat them than petunias. But then again, most leaf eaters are specialized and only eat leaves from one group of plants.

What I am trying to say is that whatever is eating your petunias is probably not the same thing eating your sweet potatoes.

Caterpillars don't have eyes and are actually quite helpless. If you just brush them off the leaves and away from the plant they are eating they often cannot find their way back.

Before everbody freaks out over eyeless caterpillars - the big round objects you see on the front end are where the eyeballs are being formed under the skin. They will be eyes when it changes into a butterfly or moth but at this stage they use tiny simple sensors to find their way around and mostly use chemical cues to locate the leaf they want to eat. The mama (butterfly or moth) lays the eggs only on certain plants so that the caterpillars hatch on the right plant in the right place at the right time - and doesn't have to go far for its first meal. Usually the thing it was born eating is the only thing it can eat from then on. Thats it for todays biology lesson. Back to the weeding!

Very interesting! Where are tomato hornworm eggs laid?

on the underside of solanum member plants' leaves. tomatoes, potato, pepper, eggplant, etc. they are voracious and go from tiny to big way too fast(and in the process pretty much destroy whatever they're on). however, i have caught hornworms on a butterfly bush and a sunflower once each. big huge ones, both times (the one on the sunflower was as long as my hand, about 7"!). i have pix to prove it in both cases. and not really close to solanums either instance- so i dunno if mama moth was confused, or they wandered. most caterpillars that are specific can only eat that type of plant- their enzymes won't digest anything else, so i was mighty surprised, but they'd been munching, no doubt.

Tammy I have a book on caterpillars that shows a photo of all the caterpillars of the US. There are dozens of species of Sphinx moths with caterpillars that look the same. Some use oaks as a host plant others use vines - the list is endless. More than likely your lookalikes were where they were supposed to be.

Last year my petunia flowers were all killed by something eating only the flowers. I refuse to use poison so pulled them out and called it a day. Now, the same thing is happening....tiny holes in the flowers only. I've been told flea beetle might be the culprit. Anyone know?