🐉 Tomato Hornworm

How to identify

A fat green caterpillar up to 4 inches long with white V-shaped stripes along its sides and a harmless black 'horn' on its rear — intimidating, but it can't sting. You'll usually spot the damage first: stripped stems and big black frass pellets (caterpillar poop the size of peppercorns) on leaves below.

Damage signs

Hornworms defoliate with shocking speed — a couple of caterpillars can strip a tomato plant bare in days, then move on to the fruit, gouging green tomatoes. They prefer the tops of plants, so the damage appears suddenly overhead.

Plants it attacks

Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, potatoes

Non-chemical controls

• Handpick them — they're enormous, slow, and easy to spot once you learn to look for frass pellets and stripped stems; chickens consider them a delicacy.
• Hunt at night with a UV flashlight: hornworms fluoresce bright green under ultraviolet light, turning a chore into a glowing safari.
• Leave the ones carrying white cocoons alone — those are braconid wasp pupae, and the wasps inside will hatch to parasitize the next generation.
• Till the soil in fall and spring to destroy the large brown pupae overwintering underground.
• Plant basil and marigolds near tomatoes; they're reported to confuse the night-flying moths looking for egg-laying sites.
• Rotate nightshades to new beds each year so emerging moths don't find tomatoes exactly where they left them.