Marigolds

Marigolds after the tomato plants have been pulled out

Tomato Hornworms are a vicious pest in the garden. One mature hornworm can destroy a whole tomato plant in one day. Get infested with hornworms and you can lose all your plants in a matter of days.

Because of the damage they can do, controlling hornworms is a big topic of discussion among farmers and gardeners. There are several organic methods to control these pests. Pick n' drop is a method many folks use. They pick each hornworm off the plant and drop it in a jar of gasoline or kerosine. Not exactly environmentally friendly when you have to dispose of the hornworm corpses, though. BT is an organic pestiside that some people use and it does a good job of controlling catepillars. But, I normally only use BT as a last resort as I resist spraying any kind of pesticide, even organic. I've also heard of people having success using parasidic wasps as a control.

For us at One Love Farm, we use a combination of crop rotation and hand picking of the pests (disposing them in the garbage instead of a can of gasoline) along with BT if the infestation gets really bad. This year, however, we tried using marigolds as a pest repellant. We've heard that hornworms hate the smell of marigolds and will not come near areas where they are planted. In the past we'd half heartedly planted a couple marigolds but this year we decided to go all out and see what would happen. I can tell you that we had a bumper crop of tomatoes and I didn't see a single hornworm the entire season! While one year doesn't prove anything, we will definately be using marigolds next year to try and keep those nasty hornworms away!