Found on my Tomato crop last year.

I am just fascinated by this Tomato Hornworm, although in all my years of gardening, I have never found it on a tomato plant, but only on grape vines. I have captured them, and put them in canning jars on my deck, with small airt holes punched in the lid, and the next morning, nothing! Like they are gone or disintegrated?? Multiple tries! Nothing! I wonder what happens to them in just one night? Do you think they could have gone from caterpillar to moth in that one night? Mine were very stunning, and at least 3" long.

I wait with great hope every year for a good crop of horn worms, they are the best bait in the world for Bass, Blue Gills, Crappie. Their skins are so tough I have caught three fish on one worm. I keep a fish tank with tomatoe volinteers form the compost pile and toss them in there untill I get a few (they freeze well).

I had a plague of them last year by this time. This year I haven't spotted any. Yet.

My gorgeous and amazing tomato plants were all of a sudden being devastated by T-hornworms. Every evening I would go out and pick off 8-10, including massive ones. I ended up doing the BT/potassium silicate recipe, via a short video I found on YouTube. The link is here - I am day 5 post treatment and all seems to be good - for now. Although it is supposed to be 108 here in the So. Calif. low desert today - so on to problem #2 to save the precious tomato plants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

UPDATE: these b-stards are even going after my Serrano peppers - go figure!!!

My eggplants were nice yesterday and today I found a hornworm thoroughly enjoying them. Overnite it ate a third of the plant's foliage!

Ouch, Rob! Take a really close look tomorrow. They can be so tiny and hide underneath the leaves. They grow really quickly by eating your plants.

I found three more....Here is one.

Keep looking. I have no idea how they find the plants, but they always do! I've never grown tomatoes without having them show up for the party.

It's a shame that they can devastate tomato plants so quickly. The adult moths are quite beautiful and are the insect equivalent of a hummingbird. They can hover, fly up, down, forwards and backwards. And they pollinate many flowers. What they take away, they give back.
And if the tomato plant is big enough, it usually survives the horn worms and even benefits form a little pruning.

Since I don't have tomatoes, they devour my brugmansias with crazy appetite.