Worms as lab experiments

And, once again, back to the hornworms.

The whole “hornworms eaten by wasps” thing was really interesting to all of us, but the idea of leaving the worms on the plants, even as they themselves were being slowly digested by wasp larvae, was, um, problematic. How long did it take the worms to die and how much of the plant would they consume in the meantime?

So my colleague, Karen, educator and farm assistant extraordinaire, decided to do a little scientific experiment. (Karen comes by her scientific credentials honestly, having earned a Master’s Degree in Geology along with one in Education. So she combines an educator’s curiosity with the scientific know-how to back it up.) She caught a bunch of wasp-infected hornworms and stuck them in a plastic container with a couple tomato leaves and green tomatoes. She then left the containers in a corner of the greenhouse and we all sat back to see what would happen.

As it turned out, not much. After about a week, the wasps did, indeed, hatch, but they flew away and left the worms severely weakened but alive. I subsequently found some evidence on the Internet (http://www.gardengrapevine.com/TomatoWorm.html) that the horn worm needs to keep munching for the wasp to complete its life cycle correctly. Sort of a devil’s dilemma—kill the worm and the wasps won’t live to protect your plants; let the worm live and it devours your plant while in its own death throes.

The stock advice seems to be to move the infected worm to another part of your garden so that it won’t destroy your tomatoes as it dies.