Posting this since it impacted me this morning. Found a tomato hornworm munching on my Jalapeño plant. Luckily I was able to get them in time and the plant should be okay. This thing snacks on all things in the nightshade family which includes peppers! So if you’re growing tomatoes and see something munching keep an eye out before it gets to your peppers
I’m spraying neem oil and thuricide to stop these bugs next time!
I have some of these suckers in my garden (also have the parasitic wasps!) but thought it would be fun to take my cousin out to look for them under a black light last night.
I guess our light wasn't strong enough because we didn't see anything, but then I remembered it was tomato hornworms that glow. Do tobacco worms do this also? They're so similar but I'm not too familiar with their glow abilities.
This is my first time caring for caterpillars, and since I ordered them from somewhere that sells them as feeders (it's cheaper), so they didn't specify age or instar.
Is there a way to tell before they actually start pupating? Should I take any precautions or extra steps if I notice they're close? I have some soil in their cage since I heard they pupate underground.
Edit- To clarify, by 'some soil' I mean a plastic container of at least 4in of soil
I've got a tobacco hornworm that I've been keeping and feeding for the past several days, and as of yesterday it stopped eating and started wandering around its jar. I recognised this behaviour as it looking for a place to burrow to pupate.
At the moment I've got it in a large jar half full of sphagnum moss, which it has burrowed into, but it's continued wandering around the jar in and out of the moss, so I'm not sure if it's an appropriate medium. So what sort of substrate is appropriate or suitable for this species to pupate?
