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What's the best way?

cjbrewer5

cjbrewer5

What is the best way to get rid of green hornworms. I have already found like 8 on my plants I have been spraying but keep finding a few everyday. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Thanks for any help!

Charles
 
I use Dipel Dust. It is a powder form of thuriside. This stuff is a bug pioson. Thuriside sounds toxic but it is actually organic. Some people mark it as BT. This can also be found in liquid form in concentrate. I simply dust the whole plant and the soil surface under the plant. I have also had good luck with diotomaceous earth. Not sure of the spelling but it is known as DE at the nursery. DE acts like microscopic glass and cuts the little bugers to death. DE seems to work on a larger variety of bugs but you have to reapply it after it gets wet. Rain and foliar feeding washes the DE into the soil. The Dipel dust actually is taken up into the plant and becomes systemic and is a pioson to bugs. If the bugs chew on a plant treated with Dipel, even if it washed into the soil, it will die!!! Good luck with those bastards!!!! They are a crop killer!
 
If you choose to pull them off and squash them, I've found they don't like the heat. They are usually out munching around sunup and sundown. While there is light in the sky but no actual sun. Look for the stripped leaves that aren.t browning and dying. Find the fresh green stripped leaves. You can usually follow this to the worm. If it is too hot, they are down chillin in the soil and you won't find em. Last year I only saw hornworms with red stingers. This year i have seen alot of blue stingers. Not sure what that may mean. The red seem easier to find.
 
I used BT in liquid form which they sell at Home Depot for about 6 bucks. Perfectly safe for the plants and beneficial inscets and very effective.
 
BT for a hornworm? That really seems like overkill to me.

I just take a paper towel, pick them off the plants, and either throw them in the woods, or if they've pissed me off by eating a pepper leaf to the bone, down the toilet. If I don't have a paper towel on hand, I just pull them off with my hands and chuck them. They are totally harmless. A little squishy but not in a beyond-gross way.

There are two ways to know you got 'em. Your leaves get ravenously consumed, very quickly - much more quickly than with other pests, and also they leave telltale droppings that look I guess like little round, brown pellets. You will typically find a group of the pellets - about 5 to 20 of them. The worms are to be found very near directly overhead of the droppings. If you see 5 droppings, you're in good shape. If you see 20 or 30, well, that is the bathoom trip after a big eating binge, so that is not ideal and you want to act quickly if you see that.

But anyway, why would you use a poisonous substance to deal with a problem that can basically be dealt with with a flick of the finger? Save the poisons for when you really need them. jmho
 
Bt is organic and doesnt affect other bugs, just caterpillers. It can be used as a preventative so you don't lose half the leaves on your plants before you notice the thing. Been there, done that. Now I start spraying weekly starting in mid-June and that takes care of them.

jacob
 
Do what Silver_Surfer said , Spray your plants with Spinosad. This stuff is safe and works. I've had cucumber beetles , horn worms and a few other critters that eat your plants. If they ate anything sprayed with Spinosad you could count the bodies at sunrise.

Peace ,
P. Dreadie
 
I hand pick them and set the little bastards up on my block wall for the birds to get. I usually make it to my patio and the wall is covered in grackles fighting over them. Nothing more satisfying than seeing them torn apart...
 
J762 ..... That's good sport ... sometimes I "brick" them .... But I must admit I'm not sure who I hate worst. Big Green Worms or Grackles !! When I lived a Austin the Grackles would team up my dog when he was trying to eat. Several would jack with him until he ran them off .... then their buddies would run in and eat until the dog saw it. On & On & On
Slow dawg ....

We used to buy day old bread, then go to the park to feed the birds. In minutes you were over run with Heckel & Jeckel bastards. So we'd feed the Grackles .... A dime size piece tossed into a group of twenty. Now that's fun .....

Peace,
P. Dreadie
 
Bricking them was fun, along with the grubs that I gave the same treatment to, until my wife asked me "WTF are all of these crusty green and brown spots on the wall"?
yeah, no more bricking them.
 
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