Tomato and Tobacco Horn Worms make great fish bait. Just place their heads on the pointy end of the fishhook and turn the wrong side out. Bream, Crappie, and Bass love them and it's a good way to get rid of them while catching fish for dinner.

My mother-in-law Mary Joe Taylor taught me this -
When you plant the seeds or the young plants put a Large WHITE Styrofoam or Paper cup with the bottom cut out in the hole so that it is up about 4" out of the ground and put the plant in the cup. Make sure you have at least 4" above ground level of the white cup. These worms are like crickets "They won't cross white" ! Make sure that NONE of the limbs on your tomato plant touch the soil as the worms will cheat and use those leaves to climb up to the plant and then your efforts are for naught. I think that trick with the WHITE cup works on other plants as well as other pest like maybe the cutworm. Try it - I haven't had cutworms in years since using this trick!

This is my 4th year growing tomatoes. Tomato Hornworms are a problem every year. I am determined to be their nemesis. We use tomato cages and the moths often lay their eggs on leaves near the metal of the cage. I suppose they use the cage for support sometimes. The moths can be largish and the metal of the cages offers more support than tomato leaves. The eggs are usually on the underside of the leaves, but not always. So looking for eggs near the cage metal can be quite productive. Rolling eggs off of a leaf is usually fairly easy and considerably less gross than dealing with the hornworms. Of course, the moths lay elsewhere, so keep an eye out for telltale damage. Cheers!

I plant tomatoes in large containers on my back deck, and will try netting over each plant to hopefully protect the moths from laying their eggs in the soil. The fact that The Green Menace lays eggs twice a year doesn't help matters. I'll give a heads up if it works.

I've noticed this is the first year I've had THWs got them 3 times now on a new jalafuego plant almost destroyed it, grew back just found number 2,3,4. #2 was about an inch long maybe 3mm thick other 2 were fresh hatched worms clear and tinyyy. I can't till because my bell pepper plant is 5 years old and is huge and would love to not destroy it. Anyway add any pepper plant to plants they attack, not just bells sadly :/

These devils bypassed my tomatoes and ate my potatoes down to the ground, then infested my datura plants. As these are night-blooming flowers, I am not entirely surprised, but pulling them off by hand is harder than you would think. Those suckers are STRONG. I have a small garden, so hand-picking works well, but planting dill only ended up feeding the grasshoppers. Did nothing to deter hornworms.

it's my first year gardening in Alabama after 20 years in Colorado. Takes some time to identify indigenous pests. A bunch of worms the size and thickness of my middle finger springing up out of nowhere? Didn't expect that.

I just went out and checked my 4 pots with tomatoes planted in them. I found a bunch of horn worms and actually one big brown worm that looked similar to a horn worm except for color. I picked off the worms I found and pulled them in half and threw them away but I also found that a lot of my tomatoes had holes in them and many of the holes were very discolored. I cut into one tomato expecting to find a worn or something but there was nothing there. Can you tell me what might have caused these holes in my tomatoes?