Return of the Hornworms

Can you spot the tomato hornworm is these photos?

                               

Over at Iroquois Ave I've been seeing signs of hornworms for the last few weeks, but it wasn't until today that I finally caught one. Hornworms eat the foliage and flowers off tomato plants and if there are enough of them can do serious damage to tomato plants. Luckily I haven't seen much damage, but as you can tell from the photos they're not easy to spot. Both Food Field and Buffalo St. have had serious infestations in their hoophouses. Luckily they haven't done enough damage to prevent you from seeing the first tomatoes of the season in your boxes for the last few weeks.

Luckily nature provides us farmers a parasitic wasp that feed off of the juice of hornworms by laying eggs on the worms. So far I haven't seen any signs of the eggs, so for now I'll continue to look for and pick off the worms by hand.