I have had some run ins with worms lately. I use the term worms loosely, I have had more problems with caterpillars I guess. Worms are not the bad guys. I just know that I did have a tomato horn worm and this guy was huge!
From experience one of these ugly looking things can clean the leaves off of a perfectly healthy tomato plant overnight. He should be called a caterpillar. I love my earthworms and other worms in the ground. They are beneficial.
Now on to caterpillars. They are often the ugly little precursors to beautiful moths and butterflies. They serve no purpose, do their jobs, go into a state of metamorphosis and emerge into a winged creatures that pollinate and flit about. I try to tally their checks and balances with what they have destroyed with what they create. When they were children they ate a lot of shit, but does the positive stuff they do as adults compensate for the damage they have wrought?
I have passion vines that the Gulf Fritillary butterfly loves to lay its eggs on and if I don't catch them in time they will clean the entire vines off, like zero leaves left. I usually use a Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) sold as Thuricide to combat them but with all of this GMO and Monsanto stuff going on I wonder if even this bacterial warfare I use is going too far? Maybe the answer is to just keep them in control and let them clean some leaves off and complete their life cycle as long as they don't destroy my plant, I doubt if they would kill it completely because they would have no plants for the future generations to feed upon.
Maybe if I can strike a balance between nature and my garden I can reap what I need and still allow mother nature to collect what she needs to carry on. She is the one being abused in all of this. I can allow one ugly caterpillar to eat some of my leaves and go into the ground to become a moth that is in amazing in itself.
The hummingbird moth
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