How to Get Rid of Tomato Hornworms Before They Strip Your Plants Bare
Quick answer: The fastest way to clear tomato hornworms is to head out after dark with a blacklight flashlight. Hornworms glow bright green under UV light, so you’ll spot every single one instead of missing half of them like you would during a daytime hunt. For bigger infestations, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) spray kills young caterpillars without harming bees or other pollinators.
Tomato Horn Worms are pretty cool looking, but if you see one in your garden, be aware that a single Hornworm can decimate and tomato plant within HOURS. Here’s a simple way to get rid of them . . .
You might not even be sure what’s eating your tomato plants, at first glance, it may seem like deer or rabbits have eaten them because the leaves and stems are completely gone! After all, how can such a little critter create so much damage?
What Are Tomato Horn Worms?
But these aren’t ordinary caterpillars, they’re Tomato Horn Worms, otherwise known as Manduca Quinquemaculata. It’s the larval stage of the Five-Spotted Hawkmoth.
When Do Tomato Hornworms Show Up?
Hornworms don’t hang around all summer waiting to strike, they show up on a schedule. The adult moths emerge in late spring and lay eggs on the undersides of tomato leaves. Those eggs hatch into caterpillars that do the bulk of their damage from mid to late summer, usually July through August here in South Carolina, and again in early fall if you get a second generation.
That’s exactly why a plant that looked perfectly fine on Monday can look weed-wacked by Thursday. The caterpillars are tiny and easy to miss when they first hatch, then they hit a growth spurt and start eating like they’ve got somewhere to be.
Once they’ve finished feeding, they drop into the soil and pupate there over winter, which is a detail that matters more than it sounds like it should (more on that in the prevention section below).
Bring in praying mantids. Mantids are one of the best natural predators for hornworms, and they’ll eat aphids, cabbageworm, pickleworm, cabbage loopers, and a long list of other garden pests along with them. You can order mantid egg cases online for about $10 to $15 a season, or harvest and overwinter the cases yourself once you know what to look for. We’ve got the full rundown on ordering, hatching, and releasing them in the garden over in our organic pest control guide.
Telltale Signs You Have Hornworms
1 If your plant looks like it’s been eaten off by a large animal, leaves, and stems are missing overnight, or if it looks like someones been using a weed-wacker on it.2 If there are greenish or black droppings on leaves. This is the remains of what used to be your beautiful healthy tomato plant. Below is a photo of a “fresh” hornworm turd. Notice how it’s brighter green in color.
It takes only one big hornworm to strip a tomato plant of its foliage in one or two days. In general, they work from the top to the bottom.
Removal Methods Compared
Not every method fits every garden. Here’s how the main options stack up so you can pick what works for your setup.
Method | Cost | Best For | Drawback |
Blacklight + handpicking | ~$10 one time | Home gardens of any size, chemical free | Requires going out after dark |
Daytime handpicking | Free | Small gardens, quick daily checks | You’ll miss more than half of them |
Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) spray | $10 to $15 a bottle | Larger infestations, organic gardeners | Only works on young caterpillars that eat treated leaves |
Natural predators (parasitic wasps, birds) | Free | Long term, hands off control | Takes patience, won’t stop an active infestation fast |
How to Get Rid of Tomato Horn Worms Easily
The absolute easiest way to ensure that you get rid of all the tomato hornworms in your garden is to wait until dusk. Once darkness settles upon your garden, grab a blacklight flashlight, slip on a pair of gloves (if you don’t like touching bugs), and head to the garden.
Shine the black light starting at the top of each plant and work your way down, plucking off the hornworms into a bucket. The hornworms will GLOW brightly under the light, giving away their location immediately.
You can get a hand held black light for about $10 online or at Walmart, lowes, etc. (By the way, once you’ve gotten rid of the hornworms, let the kids use the blacklight to blow Glow in the Dark bubbles in the backyard!)
If you try to just pull them off during the day, you’ll more than likely find them near the tops of your plants. You will also likely miss more than half of the worms because of their ability to blend in well with their surroundings.
Here is what we found on just three of our (10) plants:
Other Ways to Get Rid of Hornworms
If your infestation is bigger than a flashlight and a bucket can handle, or you’d rather not go out hunting after dark every night, you’ve got a couple of other solid options.
Bt spray (Bacillus thuringiensis). This is a naturally occurring soil bacteria that’s toxic to caterpillars but leaves bees and other pollinators alone. It only works while the hornworms are still small and actively eating, so the key is spraying early rather than waiting until you’ve got a fully grown horned monster on your hands. According to Michigan State University Extension, the smaller the caterpillar when you treat it, the easier it is to control the whole infestation.
Let nature do the work. Parasitic wasps are one of the best free defenses you’ll ever get. If you spot a hornworm covered in what looks like small white rice grains stuck to its back, leave that one alone. Those are wasp cocoons, and that hornworm is already a dead worm walking. The wasps that hatch will go hunt down more hornworms for you.
Attract the birds. Downy woodpeckers, Baltimore orioles, bluebirds, flycatchers, and sparrows will happily pick hornworms off your plants if you give them a reason to visit. A shallow dish with a few hornworms in it near your feeder tends to do the trick fast.
Preventing Hornworms Next Season
The best hornworm you’ll ever deal with is the one that never hatches. Since these caterpillars drop into the soil to pupate over winter, tilling your garden beds in the fall exposes those pupae to freezing temperatures and hungry birds before they ever get the chance to become moths in spring.
Crop rotation helps too. Hornworms don’t just go after tomatoes, they’ll also feed on peppers, eggplant, and potatoes, so moving your nightshades to a different bed each year makes it harder for a population to build up in one spot.
Companion planting with dill, marigold, or basil won’t guarantee a hornworm free garden, but it does help draw in the parasitic wasps and other beneficial insects that keep populations in check on their own.
Practical Uses for Tomato Hornworms
You may be wondering, are tomato hornworms good for anything? Once they pass the pesky caterpillar stage they do become beneficial pollinators. As such, it may be worth relocating them to a less devastating area away from the garden.
Personally, we think they make great “treats” for our chickens, but you can drown them, squish them, or let them go somewhere else far, far away from your garden. My husband prefers to go catfishing with them!
Entice native birds such as downy woodpeckers, Baltimore orioles, bluebirds, flycatchers, and sparrows but placing these fat, juicy caterpillars in a shallow container near your feeders.
What’s your favorite way to get rid of tomato hornworms? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.
Frequently Asked Questions
No, tomato hornworms are not poisonous and are safe to handle. The horn on their rear looks intimidating but it’s harmless and doesn’t sting or bite. Gloves are more about personal preference than safety.
Hornworm eggs are small, round, and pale green, usually laid singly on the undersides of tomato leaves. They’re easy to miss during a quick plant check, which is part of why the damage seems to appear overnight.
They can, especially if a second generation of moths lays eggs later in the season. Checking your plants every few days through July and August catches new hatchlings before they do real damage.
No, they turn into the Five Spotted Hawkmoth, a large moth with a four to six inch wingspan rather than a butterfly.
Hornworms also feed on peppers, eggplant, potatoes, and some nightshade family weeds, which is why rotating those crops each year helps keep populations from building up.
Yes, Bacillus thuringiensis is approved for organic gardening and only affects caterpillars that eat treated leaves. It does not harm bees, ladybugs, or other beneficial insects.
Those white grain like bumps are parasitic wasp cocoons. A hornworm with cocoons on its back is already dying and should be left in the garden so the wasps can hatch and go after more hornworms.
A single large hornworm can strip a plant of its leaves within a day or two, and without foliage the plant can’t photosynthesize or support fruit, so yes, an untreated infestation can kill a plant.
In most regions, including Michigan, hornworms are most active from mid summer through early fall, with damage typically ramping up in July and August.
They feed both day and night, but they’re much easier to spot after dark with a blacklight since their bodies glow brightly under UV light, unlike during the day when they blend into the foliage.
Got a hornworm horror story or a trick that worked better than the blacklight? Drop it in the comments, we read every one of them.
Content last updated July 2026.
On a sunny day I sift flour on the plants. They don’t like that at all and they fall to the ground. Then I put them in buckets and feed the birds with them.
How to get rid of Tomato Worms?
My dad did it the “Italian Style”. He use to cut off the section or small part of the branch that it was on and roll them up in newspaper. He would either put them in a metal pail or our backyard fireplace.
He would just set it on fire and have us kids watch as he did it and said that he was “Roasting it”! That is a true story! I think about it and chuckle.
We use to even get a kick out of it too! You talk about old fashion? That was back in the early 1950’s.
It did work too!
My chickens pick off the horn worms on the lower leaves. We have a family of mocking birds that loves tomato worms. We have had no significant damage from tomato worms this year. Stink bugs and thrips have been our biggest pests this year.
We hand pick the stinkbugs. The thrips are so tiny and fast, but we must have thousands of them. They sucked our grape leaves dry.
Any ideas?
Yes! Just pulled a huge one off my plants the other day, he was as big around as my thumb and as long as my ring finger (I have big blocky work hands lol). But I didn’t know they would glow under black light, I will be trying this.
I’m giving Neem Oil a try. Am going to get a black light for fun.
I regularly sprinkle w DE. I’ve never had more than one on a plant, but when I find one, it’s a great treat for my chickens!!
What is DE?
DE is diatomacous earth.
Diatomaceous earth is a mineral-based pesticide that contains approximately 3 percent magnesium, 5 percent sodium, 2 percent iron, 19 percent calcium, and 33 percent silicon, along with several other trace minerals. A naturally occurring siliceous sedimentary mineral comprised of the remains of algae-like plants called diatoms, diatomaceous earth is a fossilized water plant composed of siliceous compounds derived from fossilized water plants. It is then ground into a fine powder.
Food-grade diatomaceous earth is low in crystalline silica and considered safe for humans. The filter-grade type is high in crystalline silica and toxic to humans.
Both can safely be used to sprinkle on garden plants, landscaping, pets, etc for pest control. It works by dehydrating the exoskeleton of bugs, essentially suffocating them to death.
The lifecycle of a tomato hornworm is about a month. After hatching, caterpillars feed for three to four weeks before reaching full size. Upon reaching maturity, caterpillars drop off their host plants and bury themselves in the soil to pupate. During mid-summer, caterpillars emerge after two weeks to start their second generation.
That’s how they find your plants!
Our chickens LOVE them. 🐛