How to hunt a tomato hornworm

One must be crazy to spend the morning searching through 600 tomato plants for the 4-5 inch long tomato hornworms that are so cryptically disguised in the foliage as to be nearly impossible to see. I call it hunting. First you must track the beasts, looking for defoliated plants and poop. If you find a defoliated plant, you check to see if the ends of the branches that have been munched are green or brown. If they're brown and dried over, then they are not fresh and the hornworm has most likely moved on. Similarly, if the poop is brown and dry, there is a good chance the hornworm is not in the vicinity any more. However, green branch tips and green poop means the quarry is nearby. Then begins the difficult task of locating the caterpillar.

They are the same color as the tomato plants, bright green, and have stripes and spots that blend in with the mottled sunlight filtering through the tomato leaves. I'm not sure what my trick is to spotting them. Sometimes I see the bright red "horn" on their back end. However, rather than looking for colors, I usually look for their shape: an oblong lump on the plant stem. They will sometimes rear up, making them easier to spot.

Once they are spotted comes the task of prying them off the tomato plant. The little beasties cling to the stems with great tenacity. I grab them from behind the head, as they will often projectile spit green goop while they make a furious click-scraping noise, their bodies wiggling and pulsating. Their defensive attempts are lost on me. Once I have them ripped from the plant, I survey the beauty of their stripes and eye-spots. They have distinctive spots running down their bodies that look like eyes, probably used to ward off predators. I've noticed that the largest, most distinct spot right behind their head has a wide variation in the color of the "iris". Some are blue, some red, some yellow, some black, some green. Do those with particular colors of eyespots have greater rates of survival than those with other colors?

After brief contemplation of such things, I throw the hornworm on the ground and smash it with my foot. It pop-snaps like a cherry tomato does in your mouth (sorry if I just ruined cherry tomatoes for you) and lime-green goo squirts out from beneath my shoe. Thus ends the life of another tomato-murdering hornworm.

-Shannon

Storing Your Veggies

One important part of fresh produce is knowing how to store it. Most of the items we grow prefer to be stored in plastic bags (or sealed containers) in the fridge. However, some things prefer not to be refrigerated. Below are storage tips for a few commonly mis-stored items.

Storage Tips of the Week:

Tomatoes—prefer to be kept out of the fridge. When chilled below 55 degrees, they lose some of their flavor and start to get a mealy texture. They will stay in great shape for a week or longer on the counter in your kitchen.

Eggplant—Ever notice eggplant with brown spots? Those brown spots are chilling damage. They prefer to be stored between 60 - 80 degrees. So please keep these on your kitchen counter as well.

Basil—Basil stores well two ways: in a plastic bag in the fridge or put a bouquet of basil in a glass of water or vase and enjoy the beauty and scent until you are ready to use them. Change out the water every couple days. We recently had someone keep their bouquet in the kitchen in a vase for a month!

-Joannée

Another Hot Week

It's been another hot week, but we were lucky enough to get some much-needed rain at Stone Coop Farm on Monday. The tomatoes, peppers and eggplant at Tuthill Farms—the location of our 2nd acre of growing space—are getting much bigger. The winter squash there is also getting large and spreading its vines out in every direction

We have a ground hog enjoying the kale and hearts of the lettuce heads at Stone Coop, so we're hoping to catch him in the next couple days in a live trap and relocate him to another home.

We've been doing a lot of work in the u-pick space laying out new beds and paths. There's also a good deal ready to harvest out there: chard, kale, cherry tomatoes, snow peas, basil, tarragon and mint. Members of the farm are free to come out and enjoy the harvest from u-pick any time so long as you've been through an orientation of the space with one of the farmers. If you need an orientation, come by on Wednesday when we're having market and one of us will be glad to show you around.

Come by and see us at market tonight or Saturday morning. We have lots of yummy things available!

-Shannon