And Matt's Wild Cherry is such a pretty plant...

It had little green pearls, too.

The bugger only got the top few trusses, though.

Plant basil! Works great I plant 3-4 Basil plants in with my tomatoes and peppers... havn't had a hornworm in years

Basil is planted around all of my tomatoes, but it definitely does not deter hornworms. I've found a dozen hornworms this week. They have the most gluttonous appetites!
@#%*!

A few weeks ago I had an issue with hornworms. They were on my grape tomato plants. Nothing on the peppers. Once I assasinated all of them I started to use my huge tomato plants to sheiks my hot cherry pepper and hot banana plants from the sun. Today I was watering and noticed an invader...but he had some company!

I won't murder this one. I'll let the parasitic wasps do their job! Aahhh, mother nature always finds a way to equate the scales!

Frank

BLEH! LOL! So far, I've not found any signs of any, but...I've been eliminating every Hummingbird moth I see in my flowers.

When I have 'em loaded with eggs like that, I cut the branch off & put it in a screen box I made. That way, it can't eat anymore & the wasps can fly away when they hatch.

Great pic of the parasitic wasps.
Handpicking works well with hornworms. Although I always get grossed out by these guys.

Here is a link that might be useful: The tomato hornworm: how to identify and control it

I just tear off the stem with the worm and toss it in the yard outside the garden. So far I've found two, both covered with the wasp eggs or whatever they are.

I have companion planted for years, including this year, and found hornworms in 2010.

My son was excited to keep them as "pets" and who I am to argue? Entertain the kid and the worms can suffer a bit - because my kid is 5. How good of a "pet" owner can he be?? I was certain the worms would suffer.

He put them in a butterfly cage and gave them tomato branches to eat. Seems they don't eat branches unless they can do some serious damage to the whole plant.

One of the worms formed a cocoon!! Or whatever it's called when they become the moth. It was so pretty!! Then, it got cooked in the garage.

My son was so sad after his loss, that I vowed that next year, I'll grow tomato plants specifically for the hornworms. I spotted a very colorful, very large, moth and am actually excited to be spot a hornworm next year.

Wow, austinnhanas, talk about taking lemons and making lemonade...!

the nasty worms ate all 16 tomato plants when I stopped checking on them for a week. basil is there, and the worms are there.
next year I will stay on top of them!

I just saw a tachnid fly attacking a hornworm on my tomato plant. If I give it more hornworms can I raise more of these flies? I wonder how many eggs those flies produce. I have seen the white cacoons before and you are saying they are wasps. What will I see on these attacked by the fly.

I saw this post and had to agree with "making lemonade out of lemons". Of course, I am a butterflier and moth-er, so I try to accommodate most any kind of wildlife in the garden.

Another way to cope with them is to plant Datura. It is in the same family as tomatos, peppers, and eggplant - Solanaceae. When I find the Tomato or Tobacco Hornworm, I just simply move it to the Datura, which it will continue to happily dine on. That way, I salvage my pollinators, too. The Sphinx moths are great pollinators to have in the garden, and I try to sustain them as much as I can.

This way, everybody is happy, me and the caterpillars. Datura gets so big it can feed more moth caterpillars than I can give them.

Susan

Boo!