Just what do you do when you see some fat, green, grub munching on your newly planted cherry tomato plant? After screaming I mean?
Right oh, you call for hubby!
He just reaches in and grabs those fat suckers right off the plant and tosses them over our fence for the birds. Our baby tomato plant is just a few months old and had this whole family of four tomato bugs just munching away at it.
Last night as I lay in bed, I thought about how much that grubby, big, ol, caterpillar looked like Heimlich from Bugs Life. Only he wasn't craving candy corn. I wish he was.
I remember seeing these fat grubs so long ago when my parents had a huge vegetable garden in their back yard and we had to get some powder you squeezed on the plants to kill off Sir Heimlich and his royal family.
I mean just where do this grubs come from?
I did some google searching and it turns out that they are officially called horn worms laid by a hornworm moth who lays it's eggs on the underside of your plants leaves. In 3-4 weeks you have what my hubby picked off the plant and it can destroy a plant in about 2 days if left unchecked. No wonder why that poor old tomato plant was looking rather thin. It also eats potatoes and bell pepper plants as well!
They offer a few suggestions to get rid of them but the best suggestion is just to do what hubby did and pick them off and leave them to the birds. They even suggested for cowards like me, to flick them off, step on them or cut them in half with kitchen shears! Oh yeah, like I am about to do any of them. Heck I don't even like stepping on spiders or anything else that may omit a crunching sound.
After hubby picked the last of Heimlich's relatives off my tomato plants, he turned and looked at me and said, "I guess I know what I am here for!"
I laughed and told him, "Mike Rowe, from Dirtiest Jobs, has nothing on you!"
Seems like hubbies in general are our heroes on many fronts. They are the spider killers, and all purpose bug killers, weed pullers, fix the toilet person when it doesn't flush, and even removing only God knows what from our sinks and drains when those stop up. All this among all their other jobs as all purpose handy men!
My hubby, Steve, is truly my Hero!
That is not the only reason I keep him around! :)
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