sluglife reblogged
Organic farming works: a parasitized tomato horn worm! Horn worms (actually a caterpillar) are the bane of summer. They can defoliate a tomato plant between harvests and are perfectly camouflaged. Luckily, there’s a parasitic wasp that lays it’s eggs on the mature horn worm. Let them hatch, and those wasp will take care of other caterpillars as well. Establishing a parasitic wasp population with purchased wasps (called biocontrol in farmer jargon) is tricky. So finding a parasitized horn worm in the field is like finding a wallet with cash AND a newspaper article about how that grade school bully got caught with a sheep. #schadenfreude #sorrysheep #organicfarming
