Since early summer, my brugs have been attacked by hornworns. I was very happy to see this:
This message was edited Dec 16, 2004 11:08 PM
They Got Their Comeuppance!!!
and another one:
Based upon the sight of these two hornworms, I should soon have enough parasitic wasps in my garden to keep the hornworms under control.
That is really cool. I'm glad you took those pictures.
Robin
So are those white things wasp eggs? Are they eating the hornworm?
Dinner time !! ............ LOL
Awwww, no more hummingbird moths. A good trade up if you ask me. Good work Delecie !
Sad, but that's life!
Oh wow! Im glad they are being taken care of.
Ok, so are Kell and I the only ones that don't know what the heck we just saw? What are the white things? I am assuming the crawling thing with the little black eyes are hornworms?
Nice pictures if you knew what you were looking at. Also, why didn't you treat the hornworms with BT??
Kell, I guess we need to look at a good garden book.
Jeanette
Fabulous shots
I agree Jnette, I have no clue. LOL. But tell me, hornworms grow up to be hummingbird moths? I am soooooo confused. LOL
Delecie -- what did you do? Please explain :)
okay Hornworms do grow up to be hummingbird moths.
from what i gather yes the wasp has laid its eggs on the hornworm and is eating it.
its sad really .
i love the hummingbird moths but hate them eating my daturas as little hungry monsters.
i guess if you want the moths you have to take the bad of getting them.
Thanks everyone. Imzadi is correct. The parasitic wasps laid their eggs in the hornworms and the hornworms met their demise.
Gretchen:
I didn't do anything, God did it. :-) I've lost count of how many hornworms I've removed this year and God had mercy on me and sent the parasitic wasps. Since there is a time for all things, I'd like to think that the hornworms' time is up and it's now the wasps time. :-)
Great pictures. Those hornworms can eat a lot. You are lucky to have received your gift of the parasitic wasps. I see a few each year on a couple of the hornworms, but most don't have any and I get chills removing them from my tomato plants.
Thanks Brugie. I don't like removing them either. I try to frighten them away by leaving the jar in the yard that contains the remains of their relatives LOL. However, they don't frighten easily so I have to remove them using a stick or by removing the leaf that's being eaten.
I had a hornworm once on a tomato plant, I think. It was so big and so beautiful. Is that the one that is a beautiful green with a beautiful white pattern on it? I thought it was such a beautiful creature i could not stand to kill it. So I brought it down to my neighbor's house. My neighbor was not a garden person and would not care if it was munching a few things.
Can you take those white eggs off its back to save it? My neighbor has a big yard. LOL I may have nightmares about this. I think Susie showed me pictures of this once and I had to go into therapy.
well,If your trying to grow tobacco or tomatoes,tomatillos and sell them the wasps are a wonderful site (egg casings on the hornworms)not to mention having to daily pick the buggers off of everything.I had so many I just started carrying scissors with me and wacked them to peices.
I was relieved when the wasps came to my rescue.
Barb
LOL Kell! You are too funny!
you know i have wondered if you could take them off too.
my Dh takes the critters off the daturas for me. i get the willies thinking about a bug. i will beat a roach to a pulp and then some if i see it. i have felines for those too.
i am not a catapiller person. we have these awful things down here that come in trees that have hundereds of themm in a webby thing. cadawba worms i think they are called. gosh talk about the creeps i think i will take the horn worms on second thought.
i have never been stung by any type of bee or wasp (knock on wood)so maybe the horn worms are better in my situation.
hmmm guess its one half the other. LOL
Delecie -- that's so cool! Maybe I should start praying for parasitic wasps to come visit my garden next summer!
Kell -- the caterpillar that you describe sounds like a monarch butterfly larva. I plant lots of asclepias for those buggers:
Gretchen:
What a beautiful photograph! Donna B. shared some asclepias seeds with me so maybe I'll have those beautiful caterpillars in my garden next year. :-)
Wow, great picture of the cat. I didn't find any here this year and this fall, there were very few Monarch's that migrated through here.
Thank you both -- I had a whole bunch of them this past Fall and more Monarchs than I've ever seen. I let them self sow this year -- I got too busy LOL -- so it'll be interesting to see how many I end up with next summer.
Gretchen you are going to have to pick your seed and share it with us. I like the monarchs but don't send me anything that is going to hatch into those green catepellers with the white things all over them. I don't think we have them up here.
Is that your new camera? What is it? You sure do get some gorgeous picures even if I don't want worms. My daughter bought a camera and she took a picture of my pond and when she played it back the water was even running.
Jeanette
That sounds neat, Jeanette. The image above was with my old camera (Olympus Camedia D-400 Zoom) with it set on "macro". The new one is also an Olympus, just a newer version with better resolution, and it'll take movies too :)
That seed is long gone now LOL! But I would imagine that you can find it anywhere. Its very common. Sold under the name of "Butterfly Weed"
I am flying out to your house Gretchen for camera lessons. I used my new one for all of 1 day. It is hard being so slow minded.
Come on, Kell -- I'd love to have you!
But, in the meantime, can I help you with it in any way? Surely it has a fully automatic mode that you can use while you're getting to "know" it???
Yes. I must just make myself pick it up instead of old reliable. A big problem is I can't figure out how to make my pictures mailable from their software program. Zoombrowser is so easy and such a joy. I keep telling myself I do not have the time now to work on it. And for some reason, my DH who usually comes to my rescue, is staying mum and steering clear of this one. I will have to get really pitiful and distraught and then maybe he will have mercy on me.
I may email you when I actually go back to it again. THANK YOU!
Hey kell, you're not alone . I didn't touch my spooky new digi camera for almost a year.
Gosh, if I got a new camera, we probably wouldn't have a meal that night until I figured out how to use it first. I sure couldn't wait a year. LOL!
Well, that is a neat picture Dstartz! Is that a crystalis? Why would we want 'Silky Gold' butterflyweed? Do cats love it?
Kell -- butterfly weed is the only plant that sustains Monarch Butterflies. It doesn't matter what variety or cultivar of asclepias. Here's a helpful link:
http://bss.sfsu.edu/geog/bholzman/courses/fall99projects/Monarch/monarch.htm
As for the camera... I'm going to look up zoombrowser. What kind of storage disk does your new camera use? One of the things that I did last year when I got my new laptop that did not have compatible connections for the old camera, was purchase a media card reader. It makes transferring the images from the camera to the computer soooooooo easy! No extra software required. I then use my Digital Image Pro to crop or whatever...
Gretchen
Delecie -- so sorry to hijack your thread...
Kell:
Here's a page I found that may help you with your camera:
http://olympusdigitalschool.com/cameras/c-series/c-7000/C-7000_Zoom_-_Basic_Start-Up/index.html
Here's a media reader that would be a big help in downloading your pix:
http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/cpg_xd.asp
Your new camera is similar (although much nicer!) than mine. I'll be happy to help you if I can.
Hope this is helpful :)
dstartz:
I hope you can post a photograph when the butterfly makes it's appearance.
Gretchen:
No apology is necessary. This thread belongs to all of us. :-)
God bless you, Delecie!