Constant Vigilance!

The daily walk-through has caught yet another hornworm caterpillar, but other than that the garden is coasting its way through summer.

Unwanted Garden Visitor

Daily monitoring has caught a pest in the garden, but otherwise the rooftop crops are doing well. Right now I'm watering every 3rd day, which is much nicer than watering every single day. Compact plants growing in containers with large water reservoirs is definitely the way to go for a relatively low maintenance rooftop vegetable garden. Depending on the temperature I can sometimes get away with watering every 4th day, but I prefer to err on the side of caution and stick to watering every 3rd day.

My only problem happens during the week, when I sometimes forget if I watered on the previous Sunday or the previous Saturday, which means the plants sometimes get watered every 4th day instead of every 3rd. 4th day watering is only a problem when there's been a string of consecutive hot days (high 80's or 90's). I can tell I've made this mistake when I come back from work and find wilted eggplant leaves. The large leaves of the eggplant make it very easy to notice if they're wilting. I've done this only a couple of times though so there's been no lasting side effects to the garden.

I Found the Hornworm Caterpillar Eating my Tomato Plant

After a few days searching I found the hornworm caterpillar that's been eating my tomato plant, please please be the only one.

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Tomato Troubles: Hornworm Caterpillar

Gross. Not only is my roma suffering from wilt I now have to look for the hornworm caterpillar that's been leaving its poop on the plant. I actually saw the caterpilllar a couple days ago, but at that time I didn't know they were harmful to plants so I just cringed and turned away. Today, after I saw the damage to the leaves and fruit and noticed the nearby black particles, I used the google and discovered the culprit.

Gardeners are likely to spot the large areas of damage at the top of a plant before they see the culprit. Hornworms are often difficult to see because of their protective coloring. Not much for the heat of direct sunlight, they tend to feed on the interior of the plant during the day and are more easily spotted when they move to the outside of the plant at dawn and dusk

The presence of the hornworm may also be noticed because of the large, black droppings (frass) that accumulate on the ground beneath the affected plants. 

I have a slightly paralyzing fear of insects so seeking it out and pulling it off should be some fine mental torture to look forward to. What's grosser the necrotic lesions of sunscald or caterpillars?

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