Hornworms are after your tomatoes — and peppers, potatoes....

In your garden, methodically munching away at your precious Beef Eater, Better Girl or Big Boys, lurks a green menace.

These ravenous creatures are the caterpillars of a hawkmoth and can strip a tomato plant of its leaves in just a few days, leaving an embarrassing skeleton of what had been the pride of your garden.

The tomato hornworm (and its tomato-loving cousin the tobacco hornworm) are among the largest caterpillars in North America. They can reach a length and width comparable to the size of your index finger.

Of course, by the time they get that big, your tomato (or for that matter your eggplant, pepper or potato plants) will be doomed.

To stop this mass destruction, you need to be out there checking your plants on a regular basis. You’ll need to look closely. Turn over every leaf. Scour your precious tomatoes with the eyes of a hawk. The hornworms’ color, general shape and posture allow them to blend in very well. Your next plate of fried green tomatoes might be at risk.

For all intents and purposes, the tobacco and tomato hornworms are interchangeable.

To the casual observer, the only difference betwixt the two are the number of racing stripes on their sides.

Both are the same color green as your tomato plant and both will do the same horrendous damage.

The hornworm starts out as a sort of translucent green and, as they eat and mature, they green up to match the foliage they consume. They have a fleshy “horn” on their aft end that distinguishes them from all of the other caterpillars that may munch on your tomatoes.

When they’re small, they do minimal damage, so minimal that you probably won’t even notice it. That’s why you have to be diligent.

Their small size and camouflage allow them to quietly consume massive quantities of your plants until, one day, you step outside to pluck a berry for a tomato sandwich only to see a ravaged plant with one or two fat and happy hornworms sitting and making rude comments regarding your abilities as a gardener.

As horrid as hornworms can be, there is help out there.

First, before you run out and buy an insecticide, take a close look at the culprit.

If you see a bunch of tiny white cocoons sticking out of the caterpillar’s back, leave it alone. That is one dead hornworm. These are the cocoons of a tiny braconid wasp that just loves to parasitize hornworms and eat them from the inside out (who says Mama Nature doesn’t have a sense of humor). If you leave it alone, there will be more wasps to attack the next generation of hornworms.

If you don’t want to rely on the wasps, you can go and buy something that will lay waste to hornworms and any other caterpillar that dares to feed on your tomato plants. It’s called Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki. But you don’t have to memorize the Greco-Roman binomial. It’s sold under a whole lot of names, such as Dipel, Caterpillar Killer or Worm Ender, with the active ingredient listed as Bt.

The beauty of using Bt is that it kills only caterpillars and, as soon as they consume the bacteria, they stop feeding and begin dying. Another option are insecticides containing Spinosad. This is another “natural” pesticide that works well against hornworms when they’re smaller.

You can also just pluck the worms off your plant and dispose of them any way you want. Stomp on them. Wear some heavy boots (the big ones will squirt).

If you’ve got a fish pond, give your finned friends a snack. Throw them onto the road and let someone’s car run over them. Or just dump them into a bucket of soapy water and let them drown. A fun time to be had by the whole family.

If none of these methods are to your liking, you can always fall back on traditional insecticides.

Make certain that you use the right ones. Read the label before you purchase the chemical to find out if it’s suitable for use in your garden.

There are other caveats, such as the amount of time between when you apply the pesticide and the point when you can harvest your tomatoes. This can range from 24 hours to a fortnight (two weeks).

For the most part, topical pesticides work best on the smaller caterpillars. As they get older and bigger, the insecticides become less efficacious.

Good hunting.

This story was originally published July 1, 2016 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Hornworms are after your tomatoes — and peppers, potatoes....."