Tomato horn worms are easy to identify, and need to be removed quickly, as they can strip a tomato plant of its leaves in a day. Here's some ideas on how to control tomato horn worms, along with a video of the parasitic wasps that feast on tomato horn worms.

Title: How to Get Rid of Tomato Horn Worm

Author: J Hfield

Article: Tomato Horn Worms can give you quite a scare if you have never run into one before. They are very large, actually the largest catepillar known, measuring up to four inches in lenght. They are very thick and green and have a horn on their ends.

They can do severe damage to Tomato plants. They also can attack, potatoes, eggplants, and peppers. If you notice that your tomato plant has many leaves eaten off and bites out of your tomato, look around you probably have a horn worm. They are very hard to see and blend right in with the green leaves. Another tell tale sign is that they leave their poop everywhere (I know gross).

How to get rid of those nasty horn worms? The best method is to pick them off the infected plant. If you see a horn worm with many little white dots, don't kill that one, it has been infected by a parasitic wasp and will eventually die and it may take care of your horn worm problem next year. Just relocate that one to another area of the garden. As for all the others, just pick them off, squish them and throw them away.

If you don't take care of them right away they can eat a whole tomato plant in no time. It is also very helpful to plant basil in with your tomatoes, it is said that tomato horn worms hate the scent. I've tried an experiment, planting a box with basil and without and sure enough the one with basil had no attack but the one without was the first plants eaten! Basil goes great with tomato dishes too so what a great combination!