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Hornworm on my pepper

A

ako1974

But the first strange thing is, I had bagged this particular plant for seed and sealed it well at the bottom; I don't think a sphinx moth could've gotten under it because I weighted it down all around with pea gravel. The bag has been on for up to 4 weeks. The hornworm was just about fully mature. The second strange thing is that I noticed relatively no damage to the plant. It's healthy, growing fine, fruiting nicely. I would think a hornworm has to eat voraciously to grow.
 
Could a moth bave burrowed under the bag on onto the plant, then found its way out again?
 
Can hornworms grow without eating too much?
 
I have no idea how it would have gotten inside that bag, but I can tell you that hornworms can eat a lot. A really large one can strip a pepper plant down to bare sticks in a shockingly short amount of time. I found that out the hard way. So I would assume if you found a big one on a plant with very little damage, then it probably hadn't been there for very long.
 
Watched a video by Jim Duffy.  He was showing his isolation set up, explaining how it works.  He mentioned that yep, sometimes the cross pollinators are smarter than the set up.  Made me remember the original Jurassic Park.  Nature always finds a way.  Anyway, isolation is an effort not a done deal.  What you are describing is odd, but insects seem to be smarter than many of our efforts to keep them out.  So I gotta go with what BlackFatalii said.  It got in when it was an adult.  How?  Well, I cant say cause that horn worm is smarter than I am.  You got lucky.

BTW: I am fairly sure spraying with a pepper infusion will make the leaves taste nasty enough that they will ignore your plants and move on to something they prefer.  Maybe add a couple drops of dawn.
 
Something like that got to my kale plants. Never even saw or found the nasty bugger but it made short work of mowing through those leaves whatever it was.
 
Yeah, I hear you - I've seen a hornworm mow down tomato plants in my garden. So....I guess I'm lucky here. But I can say this for sure: the bag protected the hornworm against the braconid wasps that patrol my yard.
 
So...AJ...maybe this is Hornworm 1, Me 0 in terms of smarts :)
 
 
ako1974 said:
Yeah, I hear you - I've seen a hornworm mow down tomato plants in my garden. So....I guess I'm lucky here. But I can say this for sure: the bag protected the hornworm against the braconid wasps that patrol my yard.
 
So...AJ...maybe this is Hornworm 1, Me 0 in terms of smarts :)
 
Click to expand...
Its like a hornworm bed and breakfast. Lol im sure hes thankful for your hospitality.
 
I was just casually looking over my beauties and spotted one on my red savina then walked over to another side of my raised bed and bag another on my Serrano. Time for some dish soap or should I stick with need. Never had this problemhere in az. How did it get here.
 
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