Why you shouldn't kill a hornworm caterpillar
Roughly 30K people have viewed a little video I produced and posted to Instagram. It’s about the green hornworm and I think its popularity is due to its message, which is quite different from what you’ll find online.
The green hornworm caterpillar, or tomato hornworm, is considered a nuisance pest. That’s because it seems to have little to no value in the garden and instead does damage if left unchecked. These little critters can consume four times their weight in leaves and fruit each day, and their preference is the tomato plant, though they will munch down on peppers, eggplant, potato and tobacco plants.
Because they are destructive, the typical guidance is to kill them, or perhaps use them as fish bait. Thankfully, most suggestions do not involve pesticides because they are so easy to pick off your plants and they are 100% defenseless. That horn, it’s fake news! It’s just there to make you think it will hurt you.
My video, however, takes a different approach. Instead of telling you how to kill them, it offers an alternative - let them live! I took the one located on my producing tomato plant and moved it to one in a different area that was ready to be pulled. I named him Stuart and let him go to town on that soon-to-be composted plant.
I found a second, smaller one that was not featured in the video. I named him Deandre and put him in a different tomato plant that was also no longer producing.
Every year I let caterpillars of all varieties take over my annual plants before I pull them. If they arrive early in the season while the plants are still producing, I move them to areas where they are more welcome. Most of the time, I just let them do their thing.
Let’s face it, my home garden is NOT feeding my family or supplementing my grocery bill. At most, I get to show off my delicious tomatoes on Instagram and enjoy eating them for a few months every year. I do also make a killer pizza sauce with fresh tomatoes and basil from the garden. But if I end up with not one viable fruit the entire season, it’s really no big deal.
When I first started gardening, my goal was to see if I could even grow something. Now, I just want my yard to be a thriving ecosystem and a bit of an oasis for all living things, including the hornworm.
The hornworm has a pretty short life cycle, so I don’t feel much inclined to mess with it. Also, they become a really beautiful moth after they pupate, and moths, like butterflies, are pollinators.
The moth the hornworm becomes is called the sphinx or hawk moth. The first time I ever saw one was in my yard and I was captivated! They’re huge and since they are a moth, they fly at night!
Unlike the larva stage, hawk moths have a good reputation online. They don’t do any damage to plants because they only consume nectar, and they use the world’s longest tongue to get to it. Both of these traits mean they can access nectar from some plants that other pollinators cannot.
They’re often confused with the hummingbird moth, which is a rare beauty that also frequents my yard. Although they both come from the hornworm family, not every hornworm becomes a hummingbird moth.
RELATED: How can you tell the difference between a butterfly and a moth?
No matter what type of moth you have, they will not last long. The full lifecycle is only a few weeks. During that time, it will be part of your little ecosystem. Whether they’re eaten, become the nesting ground for wasps (legit and gross), or they make it all the way to become a pollinator, they are the organic matter that makes your little part of the city less gray and more green.
RESOURCES USED FOR THIS ARTICLE
https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/pollinator-of-the-month/hawk_moths.shtml
https://www.rainbowmealworms.net/hornworms
https://citybugs.tamu.edu/factsheets/landscape/chewing/ent-2008/