The Horrors of the Bug World (Happy Halloween!)

The horrors of the bug world are real.

However, those horrors also provide organic pest control. So, I’m okay with it.

I immensely enjoy watching the tiny worlds of the insects and spiders on my farm—every season I see something new! This year was the first time I witnessed the parasitic wasp in action. If any of you grow tomatoes in your garden, you may have made the acquaintance of the tomato hornworm. This giant caterpillar can decimate a tomato plant in just a few days. Every year I get these hornworms on my tomatoes. And every year I fling them into the woods.

Except for this year.

As I was picking my ripe tomatoes earlier this season, I was thrilled to discover that a parasitic wasp had finally found my plump community of tomato hornworms! These particular wasps (braconid wasps) inject their eggs into a tomato hornworm’s body and—you guessed it—as the eggs hatch, the wasp larvae eat their way out through the living hornworm flesh. Play-time is over, my tomato-munching friends.

But the horror doesn’t stop there—the wasp larvae then proceed to create tiny little cocoons all over the hornworm’s body until they eventually hatch and fly away to begin the cycle all over again.

Suffice it to say, I did not have to fling a single tomato hornworm into the woods this year.

Sometimes it takes a few seasons for the predators to find your pests, but once they have their target acquired, they will be back year after year! Nature moves at her own pace, but she moves with logic and purpose—a couple years after I began planting tomatoes, the hornworm appeared. A few years after the hornworm appeared, the wasp arrived. Who will show up next in my tomato patch promenade?

ZOMBIES!!!!

Happy Halloween!!