Welcome to Georgia! I know you will love gardening here.

For worms on tomato plants, are you talking about cutworms? They encircle the stems of young seedlings and cut them off. To protect them, cut a paper towel tube into several sections, and push a section of it into the ground around the stem of your plant.

The tomato hornworm is your next problem, they will show up after your plants already have blooms and some fruit so when you see that first little tomato also see if the leaves are showing that something is eating them. If you see that find the green worm with the horn on his head and kill it, and if you dont spray, just look the plants every day and pick them off.

I don't know the first thing about tomato worms and predators, but welcome to Georgia. Hope you like it here. I'm going to plant tomatoes for the first time ever this year, so I'm hoping to learn from the answers to your question.

Thanks everybody for your answers and thanks for not pushing for sprays etc. The birds here are so fabulous and I am counting on them eating some bugs and stuff like that. Also, I have quite a few lady bugs which is a big help. Do you ever see praying mantus here? And, how about our old friend the toad. Can I expect to have a few to eat the slugs and such? happy gardening. Glad to be here it's still snowing in Syracuse.

If you want to encourage toads in your garden you can lure them sometimes. Just make a small water source near your garden and put some ready-made shelters around it. My brother made a small rock pond (about 3x3 feet) and used broken clay pots to make little caves near it. He planted some plants near it and in no time he had a plethora of little frogs hanging out.

If that is too much work or you don't have the room then you have a few options. The worms can be a problem here in Georgia, but you can control them using organic means and a little effort. I use the spray made from tea bags, dish soap, and a splash of listerine mouthwash. It will cut down on alot of bugs, but hornworms are persistent. I am not so eco-friendly as you are, but I still have to check my tomatoes daily for worms and pick them off and introduce them to the bottom of my size 12 shoe!

Those tomato hornworms scare the crap outta me! I'll go out to look at my plants in the summer and I'll find a half-eaten green tomato and several stalks cut off. The evil hornworm is nearby! The things blend in so well with the green stalks and I've seen them as long and big around as my index finger.

But, being a pacifist, I'll get a pair of gloves on and pick it off and take it over to the nearby woods and give it another plant to eat.