Making Peace with Hornworms

When I first started growing tomatoes I used to pick off the tomato or tobacco hornworms and squish them with a rock. Then one year I missed one and spotted it with the tiny white eggs from a parasitic wasp on it’s back. Ever since then I’ve made peace with the hornworms in my garden. I never pick them off or do anything to get rid of them. They get to eat some tomatoes leaves and a tomato here and there in complete peace. Why the change of heart?

I don’t want to get rid of them and risk the parasitic wasp not having a host for it’s eggs. I also don’t want the birds to go hungry, as they seem to find these giant juicy worms a complete breakfast. The truth is they’re not that damaging to tomato plants. Perhaps a little defoliation is good for tomatoes this time of year and I don’t mind losing a couple tomatoes, I have plenty to go around. The truth is that often when we step in we upset the balance of nature and make our problems worse down the line. If we squish or kill all the hornworms we’ll never have the braconid wasps in our gardens. Without the wasps we’ll end up with more hornworms, aphids and other insects. We may also inadvertently kill a hornworm that has already been parasitized by a wasp since it takes a few days before the white worms appear on their backs.

I’m convinced that I’m encouraging biodiversity in my garden by making peace with hornworms and other things viewed as “pests”. I have noticed that the less I interfere with nature the more balanced things become, even in my small quarter acre garden. I encourage you to let the hornworms live and see how everything balances out in a few years!

Do you have any pests that you’ve made peace with?

Here’s an interesting article from the BBC about how plants can send out SOS signals to predatory insects when they sense they’re being attacked by caterpillars & other insects. And the specifically studies hornworms.

OK, I’m a HUGE Nature Nerd

So, I’m driving home from the farm after picking up milk yesterday afternoon and I spotted what looked like some trash in the road. When I got closer, I noticed it was crawling – not trash. I slammed on the brakes, pulled off the road, put on my flashers. When I got close I noticed it was a HUGE caterpillar with HUGE horns, I had never seen anything like it.

I ran back to the car, grabbed a container, and scooped it up to save him from getting smashed in the road. I knew it would be right at home in the woods by our house. When I got home and showed Mr Chiots, who was as impressed with this caterpillar as I was.

Earlier this spring I spotted a huge chrysalis in my front garden and I couldn’t find what kind of caterpillar it had come from and what kind of moth it would become. After searching and finding out that this was a Hickory Horned Devil Caterpillar, I realized that this was what became the chrysalis I spotted earlier in the spring. I think I spotted the moth that comes from it a few weeks ago as well, although I didn’t take photos of it or the chrysalis.

The Hickory Horned Devil is the largest caterpillar in North America, this one was 5 inches long. They look ferocious with the huge spikes on them, but they’re harmless. After being in the caterpillar stage for 35 days during which it eats a ton, it then burrows into the soil and pupates and overwinters and a pupa. They come out as Regal moths the next year and live just long enough to mate and lay eggs and are nocturnal. Too bad I forgot to take a photo of that moth and chrysalis, I may never see one again. (If you’d like to see what they look here’s what the moth looks like, and here’s what the chrysalis looks like, thanks to some Flickr members).

I’ve stopped many times to save turtles from being smashed the road, and once we saved some baby bunnies, but I’ve never stopped for a caterpillar before (although I do swerve to miss woolly bears all the time). I released this one in the woods behind the house, hopefully it keeps away from the road.

Every stopped the car to rescue something from the road?

Quote of the Day: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued,
is always just beyond your grasp, but which,
if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

~Nathaniel Hawthorne

Yesterday afternoon when I went out to the compost pile I noticed a butterfly on my raised bed. I looked closely and realized that it had just emerged because it’s wings were still slightly crumpled. I quickly went inside to get my camera and happily took a few photos while it waited for it’s wings to get stiff enough to fly. What a beautiful stroke of luck! I believe this is a Spicebush Swallowtail.

This past week I’ve been noticing more and more butterflies in the garden, I don’t know if it’s the type of flowers blooming or if they’re all emerging with the heat, probably both. I’ll have to spend some time in the garden this week trying to get a few more photos of the various kinds of butterflies that visit the many beneficial flowers here at Chiot’s Run.

What butterfly is most common in your garden?

A Call to Arms

On Friday I spotted a baby groundhog in the garden. It startled me and I startled it. It ran down into the woods and got me thinking about protecting my crops from the groundhogs. I have everything protected with floating row covers, but groundhogs are crafty creatures and they’ll gnaw through anything to get at their favorite crops, in this case my peas that are just about to bloom!

I went out later in the day and spotted FOUR baby groundhogs in the garden. They are cuties, but not cute enough to let them mow down everything in the back garden. I knew then that we’d have to do something besides hope that they wouldn’t eat all of our crops. Every hour or so for the last 2 days I went out and scared them out of the garden area. Yesterday since we were at the cabin all day I couldn’t scare them away and they gnawed through my row cover in several places and ate all of the peas. This was a call to arms.

I uploaded some photos of the groundhogs to Flickr and someone asked if I knew of any “non-chemical deterrents” for goundhogs. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know I come from a long line of hunters, I even had my hunting license in the 7th grade. So you can guess what our “non chemical deterrent” is. Yesterday I went out in the morning and spotted one of them in the peas again, I went inside to get the “deterrent” but by the time I went back out it was gone. So Mr Chiots and I headed down into the woods to look for it’s den. We’re going to put used cat liter down in the hole, which will often drive them away. Hopefully by the end of the week the groundhogs will be gone. Too late to save the peas, but at least they’ll be a good cover crop and I’ll replace them with cucumbers and zucchini.

Do you have problems with groundhogs in your garden? How have you dealt with them?

Spotted in the Garden

One morning last week, Mr Chiots yelled through the office window, "hey you’ve got to see this HUGE slug". I looked out and saw it and decided I must take a photo, but I needed something for scale, otherwise it would look just like a regular slug. Since I happened to be working at my computer I grabbed the first portable thing I saw, my magic mouse. Mr Chiots said, "The highest life form and the lowest life form side by side."

This guy was the biggest slug I’ve seen in the garden so far. We mostly have small black slugs, I see them often around the gardens. They live under leaves and munch on plants. When I saw this big guy I thought, “Some toad is going to be so lucky to find him!”

Slugs are big garden pests for many people. People go through all kinds of trouble trying to get rid of them. I simply let them be and allow the toads that live in the garden to take care of them. This means I have slugs munching on my plants at times and I lose some foliage and a few seedlings. When we first moved in we had tons of slugs, they were eating everything. Then the toads came and now they keep the population at a decent level. So I’ve made peace with the slugs and let them be just like every other garden pest. Every year I spot big toads and little baby toads at different time of the year. I know that because I don’t kill slugs they will stick around and multiply!

I have a few boards in shady spots around the garden because toads love to live under them. Toads also love it if you leave a few piles of leaves around for them to hide under. place a few plant saucers in the garden filled with water and rocks (make sure to change water regularly to keep mosquitoes from breeding), this is beneficial for toads, salamanders and insects.

What do you do when you spot slugs in the garden?