I was outside picking tomatoes when I noticed all the tomatoes on one plant were either all holey or had black bruises on them. At first, I didn't see any bugs, but upon closer examination, I saw this thing (picture attached). Can anyone tell me what it is and how to get rid of it. I'm not sure if it's a big green catipillar (sp?) with lots of white eggs or if the green thing is part of the plant but it's scary looking and I don't want it to spread to the other plants. :cry:

:help:

Oh very cool. That is a tomato hornworm with parasitic wasp cocoons on it (ew, poor worm!). These wasps will hatch and attack other tomato hornworms. If you see other big green caterpillars on your plants, you can just pick them off and smash them. Or you can leave them and let the wasps kills them. The wasps are the natural predator of the worms, though cruel, a natural insecticide.

So should I not worry about it if the wasps will eat them (and the wasps don't eat tomatoes I assume?)

Yep - you can let the wasps get it - which may take a while, and you may lose more tomatos while waiting, or you can dispose of the hornworm, with parasitic wasp larvae still attached...

Either way it should solve your problem...

The picture didn't scare me but the description (wasp, parasite, hatch...) really creeped me out! *shudder*

Wow, I've never seen a case of parasitic wasp infestation! That's totally fascinating. *feels respect for Ludi*

I like tomato hornworms, and they turn into pretty five-spotted sphinx moths. But if it were my garden, I'd pick 'em off and move them elsewhere.

Hornworm and moth photos attached below. Hornworm photo, credit goes to kirkjobsluder (and that's my hand.) Moth photo -- stolen via Google.

WOW! Great picture borealis! I'm usually too weirded out by the things to get a good look at them... I'm one of those people who has to move the hornworms...... far FAR away from me and my tomatos...

Ludi "Oh very cool. That is a tomato hornworm with parasitic wasp cocoons on it (ew, poor worm!). These wasps will hatch and attack other tomato hornworms."

Whoa. misq17's photo of a parasatized hornworm is revolting. Glob, nature can be scary and revolting. Seriously, isn't a human's instinctive reaction to that picture, which is iconic of carnivorism (since the wasps are animals eating other animals), and not just parasitism, to be revolted, repelled, disgusted? You could claim that being revolted by it is a learned response, since you know that those eggs are going to hatch, and the baby wasp larvae are going to eat the hornworm -- but -- I didn't know that! I didn't really know what I was looking at -- yea, I recognized a caterpillar -- but the round thing on it? I didn't know what they were. Yet I was instantly revolted, anyway, as if I had a million years of genetic instict to know what kind of view is a revolting view. Same way babies instantly smile when they see a human face.

I've seen eggs like that on a leaf (imported cabbage worm eggs) -- and that doesn't revolt me at all. Seems ok to me. But the eggs on a caterpillar -- what I'm revolted because I identify with a caterpillar and not with a leaf? I don't think so. I have very little sympathy for the caterpillar. I don't identify with it, much. It is, itself, slightly revolting.