I'd be worried they'd get too much shade and would be too crowded and both would produce poorly, but that's not the main worry.

Are you familiar with the corn earworm? Of course you are. They are a common corn pest. When there's no ears of corn to much on, they have a different nickname. Guess what it is? Tomato fruitworm, as well as cotton bollworm. So, if you plant your tomatoes and corn together, my bet is that both your tomato fruit and corn ears will have caterpillar issues. I generally do not plant them close to one another, and when rotating crops annually, I will plant corn where tomatoes grew the previous year but I won't plant tomatoes where corn grew the previous year. I do that because I almost never have tomato fruitworms but generally have an issue at some point in the year with corn earworms. The earworms are not necessarily a problem with early corn, as it often matures before the moths start laying eggs, but I often have to battle them on my mid-season and late-season corn varieties.

However, it is your garden, you know, and you can do whatever you please. That's the great thing about being a gardener---your garden, your rules. I certainly wouldn't grow them close together, particularly interplanted, without regularly spraying both crops with Bt 'kurstaki' in an attempt to keep the caterpillar population from damaging both crops.

Yikes! had them bad on the corn last year. Yup.

Bon, you should only encourage the tomato hornworm...unless of course the tomato fruitworm makes a cool moth too :) (LOL...just kidding Soonergrandmom!!! :) )

As i was digging through last year's corn plot I noticed some worms and though how pretty their colors were and romanticized about nature and how things work... um... NO. . killed it.

Well, I rarely kill a tobacco hornworm. On the rare occasions I find one on a tomato plant, I just move them to a datura or something else that they like. I almost never see tomato hornworms, just tobacco hornworms, and some years I don't see any on the tomato plants at all or any tomato plant damage even though we have a dozen or two sphinx moths flitting around the moon garden at night. I think that when you provide the tobacco and tomato hornworms with a wide range of other plants they like, they'll stay away from the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. I also interplant those kinds of edible crops with companion plants said to repel hornworms and it seems to work for me----so, we have the best of both worlds---the lovely sphinx moths flying around at night and caterpillar-free tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. With anywhere from 100-150 tomato plants per year (and it was 300-600 in the years I trialed many heirloom varieties to see what would grow well and taste best here), you'd think my plants would be devoured by the hornworms but it just doesn't happen. The moon garden is primarily for the sphinx moths and hornworms, but it is really for me because I like to watch the moths.

Lisa, they know I'm not "a friendly" so they avoid my garden. LOL

I was tramatized as a child by hornworms on the neighbors plants. They were HUGE. ::shiver:: We had a plum tree when we first lived here. One day there were horn worms, huge ones, hanging upside down from the branches. We never had plums, and it eventually died, so I guess they were eating the leaves? Maybe they were hanging out there before their next life stage. I didn't care, it freaked me out. I won't be inviting any to hang out.

I never was fond of tomato hornworms, but even as a lifelong gardener, I'd never seen all that many before we moved here. My dad grew tomatoes for as far back as my memory goes, and yet I don't ever remember seeing a hornworm on his plants or losing any of our fruit to them. Maybe when I was a kid I just didn't notice.

After we moved here, I discovered this area is sphinx moth central---we not only have the tobacco hornworms (most people actually are seeing tobacco hornworms on their tomatoes here in this state, not tomato hornworms, although I'll occasionally see a true tomato hornworm) but also various other types of hornworms that feed on Virginia creeper and wild cherry trees, among other things, that grow in our woodland.

A couple of years ago we had been inside for a couple of hours after working outdoors all day and I glanced over at Tim, who was sitting in his recliner, fully reclined, and saw a big old hornworm clinging to his shoelace. It was one of the cherry ones. How it managed to crawl onto his shoe was something I couldn't figure out. He'd been mowing. Maybe it fell from a tree and landed on his foot while he was mowing the grass there on the edge of the woodland. We occasionally see some type of hornworm that has pinkish wings, and in the summer we often see the clearwing moth.

Our son was a teenager when we moved here and he really enjoyed watching the sphinx moths visiting our flowers at night and said to me "Mom, I don't see why you have to kill hornworms when you find them in the garden.....the moths are so cool". So, I stopped killing them and just started moving them to plants they like outside the garden itself. I've never regretted it. I might feel differently if I had them doing a lot of garden damage, but they don't. Tobacco hornworms thrive on many of the native solanums that grow wild in the fields here, so I even see them crossing the road when I'm out walking my dogs.

My daughter needed them for a science class in grade school. I collected them for her, which was pretty hard for me. We will do things for our kids. I didn't see any last year, or the year before. Knocking wood there are none this year.

Anything bug minecraft. I don't do minecraft. it's there. They play. They speak of it amongst themselves, but when word of it drifts my way "OH NO. NO. NOT MINECRAFT!"

So, Amy, you don't want me to save you any datura seeds so you can raise the hornworms? :) (I'm just kidding :) ) I mostly flower garden and with encouragement from Susan, started gardening for butterflies. So caterpillars in my yard are usually welcome.

LOL Bon! A friend of mine bought her grandson a "minecraft bible story book".

I have a billion and a half daturas coming up in my garden, which is my own fault because I was so busy canning tomatoes last summer that I didn't deadhead the plants regularly. I love datura, but it certainly is focused on world domination. It is a really weedy year here, but I am weeding carefully because mixed in with the weeds I have found some volunteer basil, chamomile and flower seedlings that I want to keep and transplant when they get bigger.