The Fake Tomato Worm!

I was out gadding about the garden late this evening after a long day's work of cleaning house.  It was time to escape from that distasteful job and get a breath of fresh air.  This summer has been hard on the garden what with all of the bugs, lack of water and intense heat.  Nothing wants to grow!  This is the first year in many that I did not have lots of tomatoes.  Most of the plants met their demise early in the year leaving only a few of the cherry tomato types to supply my needs.  These were planted in the Rose Garden of all  places!  Here they did well and in spite of the drought have been clinging to life by a thread!  I decided to lop off a few of the plants to see if perhaps they would send up new shoots and start anew.  Sure enough, the new branches looked fine!  Until this evening!

During my walk in the garden, I discovered that something had stripped the nicest leaves from my rejuvenated tomato plant!  Overnight it seems that some critter was quite hungry and by the looks of it, had an extreme liking for the leaves of this particular plant!  I knew immediately what to look for and soon found the culprit!  Aha!  A tomato worm!   A HUGE one at that!  This guy was nigh on four inches long!  I knew just how to rid the plant of this critter..I would just flip it off and smash it!  I looked at the tomato plants..they were all but dead.  There was not much hope in reviving them again.  I pondered..do I kill this lone tomato worm or do I let it go free?  Will the critter enjoy the rest of my plant or was this its last meal?  I pondered the question as I peered at the worm..err..caterpillar.

In reality, this was not even a tomato worm!  First..it is not even a worm, it is a caterpillar.  Yes, there is a difference!  Worms do not turn into moths or butterflies..they turn into nothing..they stay worms.  Caterpillars are what we see chomping away on our plants and they will usually turn into a moth or butterfly at some point.  My tomato worm on the other hand was not a worm nor was it even a "tomato worm".  Even though it was devouring said tomato plant, this was a tobacco worm..err..caterpillar.  These two are so similar that it is difficult to distinguish between them.  The best way is to look closely at the sides of the caterpillar.  If there are whitish stripes that go diagonally then it is a tobacco worm.  Tomato worms have V shaped markings.  Another sure way is to look at the "horn" on the tail of the caterpillar..tomato worms have green or black horns while tobacco worms have red!  Now about that horn..it is misleading, too!  It is fake!!!  That horrific-looking horn is nothing more than an appendage to scare off predators!  It will not hurt anything!  So..my fake tomato worm is not a worm and has a fake horn!  That means....I have a tobacco worm! ....caterpillar!  Which will soon make a cocoon and bury itself in my garden while waiting for me to plant a new crop of baby tomato plants.  Then it will crawl out of the ground turn into a moth and lay eggs all over the leaves! That way, when I walk through the garden, I can inspect the plants and ponder whether to smash the tobacco worms that are riddling the plants!  ooops....Smash!  Next year, I will make sure to plant my dill weed and basil in with the tomatoes.  Tomato worms and tobacco worms both love dill weed!  Not that I want to lose my herbs but finding that lunker of a caterpillar in the fine, wispy dill leaves will be far easier than hunting among the tomato leaves!