misguided hornworm
About a week ago, Garrison found a hornworm on the tomatoes. In the several non-consecutive years I’ve grown tomatoes I’ve never seen one before. Clearly neither had Garrison. He wanted to preserve it to see what it would turn into. How about just looking it up on the Internet? Instead he moved it across the yard to the pumpkins. Within minutes it was off the pumpkin and couldn’t be found. You’d think that such a large fat thing would be easier to find. The next morning I spotted it on my one potato plant.
I concluded that the hornworm must be retarded. It had to crawl past a tomato plant to get to the potato plant, which it ate a large section of. But I know now that hornworms don’t limit themselves to tomatoes. I was going to assign G to dispose of the worm once he woke up, which is later and later with each passing summer day. So by 12:30 when he finally arose, the worm was once again gone.
Yesterday, as we admired our now thriving eggplants, there he was chewing his way through a leaf - the worm, not G. Again G was assigned hornworm duty. He tackled this with his airgun, a surprisingly effective method. One shot - problem solved. Only a few more shots and the black widow spider that’s been watching me from the ivy behind the eggplant was defoliated too.
after reading that overcrowding is the number one reason home gardeners have less success with corn than expected. Overcrowding is alleged to lead to a field of nubbins. This year all the tomato plants are doing well. I like to think it’s due the incredible effort it was to dig up and work sand/compost into all that atrocious clay soil. And what a difference good soil prep makes. Last year, with minimal soil modifcation I was plagued by cutworms and earwigs. This year, hardly any pests. 
