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It's A Girl !!!

I just caught this thing munching on one of my plants. It's the 4th one I've found this week.
I sure am glad I found this one before she dropped the kids off.

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Damn caterpillars.
 
Hornworm or similar. It would be dead soon without your intervention, those cocoons on its back are from a wasp that laid eggs IN it, then the hatched larvae ate the worm from the inside out before burrowing out to pupate into a winged wasp. Unless you really hate wasps the best thing to do is put the worm outside so the baby wasps survive to hunt down new worms for you.
 
If you only found 4 you probably have at least 100.

Look on the underside of each leaf.

Look for a round pin head size opaque egg.
 
Wow, wasp eggs. I didn't squish it. I was going to but then decided to stick it in a gallon sized jar with some screen over the opening. I wanted to see what happened with it.

Well ,now I guess I'll go let it go somewhere else in the yard so the wasps can hatch.

Man you learn something new everyday. Thanks for all the responses.
 
Last summer I found a tomato hornworm with those wasp eggs on it. I was excited to see it. .. Yes,
that's a good thing to see in your garden. :P
 
[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)]Yes,[/background]
[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)]that's a good thing to see in your garden. [/background] :P[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)] [/background]

Unless your garden is near the house and you have kids that play outside...

A bottle of Seven will probably take care of those for you.
 
They will sting you if provoked, like accidentally bumping a plant one has landed on, but generally I find bumble bees more aggressive towards humans, at least the large variety I've seen around here this summer while the little ones ignore me.
 
I observed this same thing a few weeks back in my garden. I went out to check on my peppers and plants :) and low and behold I looked down and saw what I thought was pieces of white styrofoam, I was wondering what it was and upon closer look saw that it was a hornworm that had these white cocoons. I had read about this happening either on here or somewhere on the net so it was interesting to see it for real. The body of the hornworn was half brown and dead too. I plucked it off my banana pepper plant and tossed it into the yard. That was all for me and I have not seen it happen again since. I was just really thrilled to have read about it then see in for real myself too. I was happy to see another hornworn get destroyed :)
 
Hey TB, I found this on one of my tomato plants. Is this what you are talking about?

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I've found 5 of them so far on the same plant on the stems but none on the undersides of the leaves.
 
^ Yes that could be a hormworm egg, or some other type of caterpillar/worm. Either way, it's nothing you want on the plant.
 
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