8th Annual Great Tomato Hornworm Contest

Featured Creatures - File under "D" for Disgusting.

THE ATTACK OF THE Manduca quinquemaculata! -- Send us your photos.  Win the Really Big Zucchini! Details below.

It's finally time to enjoy the garden. What a relief. But wait -- here comes the bad news.

In late August you may notice the verdant green leaves on your tomato plants are suddenly vanishing. Here today, gone tomorrow.

What's up with that? Well, the missing leaves may signal the return of an annual scourge -- the tomato hornworm. These ugly green bugs slither along the undersides of the tomato leaves, munching happily on leaves and tomatoes alike. Hornworms are exactly the same color of tomato plants and if you look in the dictionary under U for UGLY, there should be a picture right there.

HERE'S THE SKINNY ON THIS BUG AND ITS COUSINS -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manduca_quinquemaculata

Tomato hornworms fluoresce differently from tomato leaves. Using an ultraviolet light source of 375 nm and viewed behind a blue-blocking filter (yellow or amber filter), a tomato hornworm fluoresces in bright green while a tomato leaf appears deep red/amber. This sharp color contrast helps gardeners locate tomato hornworms at night, SO GET OUT THE BLACKLIGHT AND GO HUNTING. They can be reduced by planting marigold flowers around these plants. And if you find on with rows of white dots on its back, that's OK. Those are the eggs of a species of wasp that sucks the life out of hornworms. Yummy lunch? How gross is that?

So get out the cameras and the measuring tapes. In inches, please. We never really understood that Dewey Decimal System anyway.

It is time, once again, for the Great Tomato Hornworm Contest!

Catch them as you find them or they will devour your foliage. They are difficult to see. Look closely.

Ugly and nearly invisible - a great combination for a hornworm -- not so much for a gardener.

This one is pretty puny.

Send your pictures of these crispy little buggers here info@petershamcommon.com

We'll tabulate the results, publish (yuck) the photos and award the annual Grand Prize of  THE REALLY BIG ZUCCHINI!

Or if you like, we will deliver your prize (A BASKET OF ZUCCHINI) to a person of your choice who you have secretly been hoping would never speak to you again.

Good hunting.

Bigger. But not by much. A photo finish for certain.