The Tomato Horn Worms & the Braconid Wasp larvae.

Here's some photos of a green Tomato Horn Worm (THW) that is covered with white Braconid Wasp (BW) larvae. Came across one of them on the branch of one of my tomato plants today.  I cut the branch off with the THW on it and laid it on my sidewalk. Then I snapped off about a dozen photos of it. Then, I did some reasearch and discovered the following info on the Internet:

The THW is the host of the BW. The THW eats the leaves on the tomato plants and also feeds on the green tomatoes plus eats leaves of other vegetable plants.

The THW's are usually from 2 to 4 inches long.

This one is very close to 4" long. This one is headed for disaster.

A full grown BW seems to have laid its eggs INSIDE  the THW.

Then the BW larvae eggs popped out to the outside on this THW.

All of the small individual larve eggs, about 1/4 inch contain a BW.

There seems to be several hundred of these white larve eggs on the BW that are just starting to pop out through the THW's skin..

That will eventually hatch as adult BW's that  fly away within seconds of hatching to find more THW's .

To lay another batch of their larvae eggs inside of.

So, it's recommended that if you see a THW with BW larvae on it,

To leave it alone and let the BW larvae and eggs do its thing,

Which is for the BW to feed upon the THW and to weaken  the THW and to kill off the THW as the BW's grow to maturity before they fly away!

Todays Flowers & Veggies

Day Lily

Marigolds

Pair of Day Lillies 

Geraniums

Pair of Marigolds

Tiger Lillies about to bloom

Tomatoes & Peppers

Guess Who Came for Dinner & Gardening

May 16, 2010

Click on the photos to enlarge them. Then use your return button to return to the regular size photos.

It's that time of year again, gardening time. After May 15th I start up my garden...

Just put in some tomatoes, peppers, and marrigold flowers. Just finished it up today, and noticed some visitors to the gardening area. They beat the deer and our local groundhog, known as Whiting Willie who has been terrorizing my veggie gardening for several years. He loves eggplant, so, I fooled him, didn't put any in this year.....

The first visitors to the garden....

Anyway, saw a whitish frog. First time I ever saw one that color. He/she is about two inches long and is bigger than any of the other ones I've seen in this area.

A white frog?

A butterfly also stopped by. Unusual markings. Like a cross between a moth and a monarch butterfly was my first impression of it.

Butterfly... Unusual markings

This years (2010) crops consist of...

I container garden. Have 6  large plastic laundry containers, about 33 gallon size. I put 4 tomato plants and 2 pepper plants in each one.

Tomatoes & Peppers

 The tomatoes will be growing up and through the tomato cages as they've done in previous years.  They are deep rooted. The peppers are low growing plants and are shallow rooted. They're actually related.

Marigolds

Have two rows of oblong planters in front of them that contain the yellow and orange marigolds. There's  four marigold plants in each one of the eleven planters.

The other side

Over on the other side of my steps, I have one of those shepherds poles that has potted hot pink geraniums in it. Also have a brown clay pot that has more marrigolds close to that. My left-over marigolds that is.

Daylilies

Just a wee bit past that there are some daylillies. I usually don't even get to see them because the deer eat the buds even before they bloom. I put out a couple bars of  Dove soap  that's supposed to help keep them away from same.

Orange Tiger Lilies

Have a cluster of the orange Tiger Lillies along with several other varieties. If they ever get a chance to bloom, I'll take some photos of them, if I can beat the deer to them... LOL.

To sum it up....

Radio in the window

The reason that the radio is in the window is to keep the deer and Whiting Willie, the groundhog away. Did I say that I live in a senior citizens complex is why I do the container gardening?