Nicholas Thompson wrote:
The Tomato Hornworm is about the size of your thumb and writhes sensuously when you try to pick it off the plant. One of these critters can devour the better part of a tomato plant in a day. I used to grab them off the plant, and try to fling them into the underbrush before my gag reflex got the better of me. The moth that lays the eggs that become the hornworm, is about the half the size of an attack helicopter and almost as noisy. The first time I saw one, I gave up organic gardening for a year. It was so horrifying, that garden defense required a 22 rifle. I would rather go hand to hand with a raccoon than touch one of those things. Hornworms: My wife (accidentally) trained our 100lb Yellow Lab to "deworm" our tomatoes one year. My wife would go out first thing in the morning before the sun drove them into the deep shade and would pick them off and toss the into a bucket. One day I came out and found our dog snacking on the little buggers right out of the bucket. By the next day, she was going around to the tomato vines with my wife looking for them and nibbling them directly from the plants. She wasn't very thorough, but she was a help. We love our "hummingbird" moths, not all species of which are tomato hornworms in their larval stages. I understand their are something like 30 species of "hummingbird", "hawk", or "Sphinx" moths. I am lead to believe that those moths who would be tomato hornworms are nocturnal and the ones you see by day are not associated with tomatoe/tobacco. Squash Bugs: One winter, my wife threw a dead pumpkin into our garden along with a bunch of other compost (I don't know why she didn't throw it on the compost pile, it is only a dozen steps away). That spring, I thoughtlessly tilled the pumpkin into the garden with my tractor. By early summer we had hundreds of pumpkin vines throughout most of our 30' diameter round garden space. My wife being the gentle gardener that she is, could not bear to prune any of them. She just planted around them. By mid summer, we had tens of thousands of squash bugs. Not being strict organic farmers, but not being interested in using industrial chemicals for the most part, we tried the simple remedies such as a fine mist of dishwashing detergent mixed with cayenne pepper, etc. This did slow them down a little, but didn't stop them. Meanwhile our squash and other cucurbits were being assaulted as well. The pumpkin patch was a breeding ground. We never won the battle, but did hold the line, yielding more squash (isn't it always the case) and definitely more pumpkin (go figure) than we could possible use ourselves. The next year we planted no cucurbits, understanding that the squash-bug eggs can winter over at least one year, but giving them nothing to keep them around, they will "go away". After that, I planted no more squash or pumpkin in the garden, instead I planted them in the tree wells around our property, more in the spirit of "One Straw Revolution". We haven't seen any squash bugs (in quantity) since. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([email protected]) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/[Original Message] From: James Steiner <[email protected]> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> Date: 3/24/2009 10:13:11 AM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] home gardening On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Parks, Raymond <[email protected]>wrote: |
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