Organic Pest Deterrents

Help! Tomato horn worms found my garden for the first time last summer. I have been organically gardening for 7 years in my spot now and have (thankfully) not had to deal with many pests. How can I deter these worms organically? I reviewed the old threads re: pest sprays but did not see one that seemed to apply. Am I destined for another season of handpicking? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Bt. Bacillus Thuringiensis will take care of them. Get either the liquid form (sold as Thuricide) or the powdered form (sold as Dipel). Altho it is considered safe because it only affects the "caterpillar" family, I'd still use it sparingly. (It can also have an impact on the Swallowtail butterfly, which is now considered as becoming endangered.)

You could also grow small-flowered plants like anything from dill and cilantro to just letting some of your local weeds grow around the border of your garden (like Queen Anne's lace or any member of the Umbelliferae Family)...this will encourage natural predators of the hornworms (braconid wasps, chalcid wasps, for example).
Hope that helps.

Horseshoe...thank you so much for your suggestions...I will try the dill...I have the Queen Anne's lace growing around...I am very nervous about using anything on my beds as I have been trying to encourage my butterfly friends to visit. I guess I have been very lucky since I have been able to get by with handpicking the buggers off my veggies and flowers...did I mention that I can't bring myself to kill them? I actually move them off my property onto an adjacent lot...kind of hoping they will appreciate their lives being spared and move on..thanks again :)

BTW, if you find a hornworm that has white bumps/wormy things on its back, DON'T KILL IT - it's been parasitized (don't try to say that one, lolol) and once the wasps are through finishing off that victim, they'll emerge and go on to do the same favor to other hornworms :) Just pick it off and toss it out of the way.

Parasitized?!?!?!? Yikes! My skin is crawling! I actually must admit that I don't pick them off...my DH has been recruited to do it! LOL! I will keep my eyes open for that tho! Does anyone know what the horn worms eggs look like? Maybe I can get them off before they grow enormous!

Yeah, ain't it great??? (*grin*) I just hum the "Circle of Life" tune to myself whenever I have to deal with skin-crawling thoughts like parastic wasp larava - the song is quite appropos, but still upbeat enough to take my mind off the grisly details.

I know it is nature and I do my best to honor all life but the parasites...ah, the parasites...send me running for my life...(skin is crawling as I write this..eeww).

Don't know if you knew this or not, but those ugly hornworms turn into a really cool moth, sometimes called a hummingbird moth or Sphynx moth. It pupates underground for about a month before it hatches into a huge moth. I make it a point to grow a few extra tomato plants up in my butterfly garden just for them. The "hummingbirds" will come at dusk to nectar on your flowers. I get a few extra tomatoes with this method, too. If you don't want to handpick caterpillars, a natural way to get rid of them is with Bacillus thuringensis (sometimes called Thuricide or Bt). It is a naturally occurring bacteria which, when the caterpillar ingests it, causes it to stop eating. The bacteria gives the caterpillar a really bad stomach ache from which it never recovers.

Tomato hornworm eggs are little green eggs about the size of a pin head. I go out to my tomatoes, look for the eggs on top of the leaf, or maybe under. I am looking for little tiny baby hornworms anywhere from 1/2" up. They are much easier to get rid of when small. I look for holes at the edges of the leaves, babies are there. I remove any leaves I find worms on to save time looking at the same leaf for another worm. I prefer to handpick. Not very often does one escape my notice. Donna