I 
recently saw a fascinating (and a little gross) picture on facebook that caught my attention. I’ve had these fat little munchers (hornworms) on my tomato plants in the past, and they have quite an apatite! Like everything in nature, there is balance and control. Fat worms like the hornworm are used by certain wasps to lay their eggs in. The wasps (Braconidae) also like to use caterpillars, beetles, aphids, squash bugs and stink bugs. It is a pretty gruesome process to think about, having your body used to feed the eggs of a predator insect, but that is exactly how nature works. If you see a worm like this with white specks on its back in your garden, let it live! You will be blessed with a new family of bad-bug-killing warriors in a few weeks. (and don’t worry, that worm’s days are very limited!) There are probably thousands of little interesting interactions like this one, and even more that occur in the soil that you will never see. I urge people to keep things like this in mind when you decide to ‘do’ something in your garden. It is hard to know what repercussions your actions have, so doing the minimum necessary is often the best choice. You might be ‘fixing’ one thing, but unintended consequences are hard to predict. Chemicals are like the atomic weapons of gardening, they are very powerful, so please understand the downsides, avoid when possible, and take personal responsibility for your actions.
According to the Texas Bug Book
The picture came from Nick with saveourskills.com. Read more about the Braconid wasp.
