I want to welcome all of the new subscribers to my blog who signed up at last week’s Dutchess County Fair. I usually have a new blog every couple of weeks and I got a bunch of new ideas from talking with folks at the Fair which you’ll see coming out in the future. I also make smaller posts on my Facebook page with greater frequency so check me out there.

Right now is a great time to set up your gardens for next year. This is especially true if you plan to follow Lasagna Gardening principles because starting now will allow the bottom layers to start composting this year, giving you a nutritional leg up on next year’s garden. Even if you don’t get your beds set up until late Fall (I installed 2 last November) you’re still ahead of the game because you’ll be able to plant as soon as the ground thaws next year.

Dutchess County Fairgrounds Manure Pile

If you don’t have enough material for beds you are installing, and you live near the Dutchess County Fairgrounds, a good source for the bottom layer is the huge pile of the animal bedding from the Fair. Unfortunately, after the next 2-3 weeks it will be carted away because of some silly local regulation.

The grounds are usually open when there’s no event in progress and you can just go in and pick up what you need. The Mulberry Street entrance is the one that is open most commonly. I do warn you there will be plenty of flies, so putting the manure in the back of pickup or sealed containers will be more pleasant than in back if your car. It took three weeks for my car to stop attracting flies last year.

Route to Dutchess County Fairgrounds Manure Pile

If you don’t live near the Fairgrounds or get there too late, check out local horse Farms or any other farm you can find near you that raises animals. Theree are a lot of them here in the Hudson Valley and you can often both fresh manure and the aged, composted manure you’ll need for the top layer.

There was a lot of interest in the Food Preservation classes I’m teaching this fall so if you are interested in taking one of them you should probably sign up soon. If you do get closed out of the classes I can also teach classes anywhere where you can provide me a sink as I have all of the other equipment I need. You can check out my Classes & Events page for all my scheduled classes and instructions on how to arrange for a private class for yourself and perhaps your friends and neighbors.

Remember it’s not too late to plant veggies for Fall harvest. Any leafy green is fine to start now, even from seed, and if you have a cold frame or use row covers you can plant even into October. I was harvesting into December last year.

Growing Broccoli- December 2009

Until next time, Happy Harvesting

Second in an Occasional Series

Tomato Hornworms are perhaps the most shocking bug to find in your garden. They are just huge (or at least they are by the time you find them). And the amount of damage an individual hornworm can do is astonishing. They eat both leaves and fruits (never all of one, but parts of two or three, I hate that). They are in the garden now, so you need to keep your eyes peeled for them.

Healthy (left) & Parasitized (right) Hornworms

Unfortunately, they are almost impossible to spot when small because they blend in very well with your tomato plants. Generally, I notice their damage first and then I know to look for them and even then they can be hard to spot.

I’ll never forget when I saw my first hornworm. I looked at one on my tomato plants and I thought a deer had come by and chomped on the top of my plant. As I looked over the plant I spotted the hornworm. I tried to pull it off of my plant, but I could never get all of its legs off the plant at the same time so I wound up just cutting off the leaf that it was on. I have continued to do the same to this day.

Tomato Hornworm Damage (relatively minor in this picture)

Sometimes (I’d actually say about half of the time) you’ll find the hornworm covered with what look like white cocoons. That is exactly what they are, the cocoons of the Braconid wasp. The adult wasps lay their eggs in the hornworm where the larvae hatch, eat their way out (think Alien) and form the cocoon to pupate.

Do not destroy a hornworm with these cocoons, because the hornworm is about to die anyway and you want the wasps to reach adulthood so they can kill next year’s hornworms.You’ll notice in the hornworm picture above how much larger and healthier looking the unparasitized hornworm looks.

There are various ways to dispose of healthy hornworms, but since I’m a bit squeamish about what would happen if I squished a hornworm, I just take any hornworm I find far away from my tomato plants, so it can’t crawl back and I figure it’ll just starve to death. Alternatively, you can apply BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) which is a naturally occurring bacteria that when eaten by any kind of caterpillar will kill it. I figure though that by using BT, it just gives the hornworm a couple of extra days to my plant before it dies. You can buy BT sprays at most nurseries these days.

The adult form of the Tomato Hornworm is a moth called the Sphinx, Hawk, or Hummingbird Moth. I prefer Hummingbird Moth because it’s the most descriptive, as they can actually hover like a hummingbird. I saw one feeding on my chive flowers last year so I would advise not planting your tomatoes near your chives.

Though individual hornworms can do a lot of damage, they usually won’t appear is such high numbers that you have to worry about losing a whole crop. So keep out your eyes for Tomato Hornworms but don’t panic when you find one.