Tomato Hornworm….What!?!?

Where did my leaves go!?!?

I walked out to check out the garden last night and saw that my beautiful pepper plants had gone from green, full, and luscious, to what you see in the picture above. I could not believe my eyes! I mean we’ve had a few pest in our garden here or there but nothing to cause great pain to our plants. This literally happened over night! I was looking around the plant, not knowing really what to expect when I stumbled upon this guy:

Is he not one of the ugliest things ever!?

I’ve done some research and apparently he is a tomato hornworm. They never seemed to come after our tomatoes but they sure ate our pepper plants up….And not just the leaves but a few bites of pepper were gone too! I hope they went scurrying off to find some water to sooth their burning throats. 😉

I looked up some organic treatments for these worms and have gotten several useful ideas. First and foremost, if you don’t have an infestation-hand picking them off is your best bet. They even suggested taking kitchen sissors and cutting them in half. Ewww…I had a hard time doing that so rather the hubs picked them off and threw them into the fire pit… Still a horrible ending but something that I didn’t have to do.

I’ll keep updates going on my battle with these hornworms. In the meantime I knew there had to be a point to these big boys lives…And of course there was. They become very large moths that play a large roll in helping to pollinate flowers that tend to bloom at night. It’s the circle of life, I suppose, and every creature has a purpose.