HelpfulGardener.com

BLACK LIGHT WAS A BUST!

Mine didn't glow at all. I thought maybe it was the type of light I used, but my gloves were glowing, as were the man's socks 4 feet away. I had some known pests that I went strait for... No go.. Took some pictures. I'm disappointed and glad I only spent $7 on the test. It was still worth it, and I had fun while looking.

Stink bugs glow!!! Their yellow bellies lit up nicely!

My night time adventure...

Mine are "being shipped"

At Amazon, comments indicated that the lights need to be lower nm for good hornworm reveal so I bought a 375nm and a (supposed to be) 365nm (some commented that it's not, but others said hornworms -- and pet urine -- lit up very well with this one.)

ATM I have no idea if there ARE hornworms in my garden, but I have seen the male cardinal hunting in the tomatoes so it's a definite maybe.... I will post results.

I'm excited to see! I need to go look at my bulb. It WAS very bright...

Mine doesn't say anything like that, anywhere on the the package. Meh. I feel like I need a re-do. I'm gonna wait on your results. Man is not gonna be so forthcoming this time, since he witnessed our results tonight.

I bought mine under the "aegis" (or is the word I'm thinking "guise" ) of "summer science project for the kids" and also bought two pairs of UV protection glasses.

HA! That might win some ribbons at the science fair! I'm sure you'll picture document! There were 2 other types of black lights. One was another bulb type and one was an 18" tube type. They were cheap, too......... Maybe if I just sneak it in there....take some notes from the Kid...

what a neat trick if it works! I hadn't heard of it, so I looked it up.

“Black light flashlights can be purchased on eBay, or you can get an ultraviolet bulb for a fluorescent desk lamp

Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/2013/12/14/599844 ... rylink=cpy

while digging around looking up the blacklight and tomato hornworm stuff, I came across this:

pinch the first or second "true leaf" stem hard enough to crush the epidermis but not so hard as to break off the leaf. This causes the tomato plant to produce an over abundance of proteinase inhibitors. This is deadly to the developing hornworm.

I have no idea the truth of this and I couldn't find much confirmation, but it certainly seems a harmless thing to try... We do know that plants have a lot of natural defense mechanisms and stressing the plant can elicit them.

WAIT!!! my mom used to have this cat ( his name was S----y Kitty) who peed on almost EVERYTHING! He was such a mean cat... And so spiteful. He escaped outside one night and never came back...

Apple, THANK YOU for mentioning cat pee glowing under black lights because, SHE GOT ONE JUST FOR THAT!

My excitement is renewed!!!

Oooh! You may have successful results before me then.
Looking forward to your report!


...I wonder if that leaf bruising trick really works... ? I can't think of a way to do a controlled experiment.

applestar wrote:
...I wonder if that leaf bruising trick really works... ? I can't think of a way to do a controlled experiment.

only if you have a few different plants with hornworms on them, that you don't mind leaving while you do the experiment. Otherwise just try bruising leaves on some not others and see if the unbruised ones get more hornworms on them than the bruised. But its a very low N, difficult to draw conclusions. Some one like gixx with 100 tomato plants (or more? ) could do the experiment better.

OK..going to dig out my daughters small black light she has for Halloween to check out my garden tonight. Thanks for the tip! I knever knew.

So, rcvd notice that my delivery will be tomorrow. As luck would have it, I found a really big hornworm today on a Flathead Monster Orange leaf, which is no more than 3-4 feet from the currently occupied house wren residence. They are very sensitive right now with noisy babies to feed, and one of them scolded me the whole time I was there. So I showed them the hornworm and told them they were slacking.

I have it in a ventilated container now with some (less than horrible)septoria spotted pruned tomato leaves to keep it happy until tomorrow so we'll have it available for our first look. I guess we'll check the Flathead Monster Orange and other Raised Vegetable Garden tomatoes on our night foray.

They DID GLOW! They did, but it wasn't super impressive. Better than the naked eye during daylight.

Tomatoes glow under black light too! Vivid violet! Or worms glow green. I was able to find 4 more worms tonight!!!!

Here are my pics! I'm SO GLAD YOU MENTIONED THIS, APPLESTAR! The pics show the hornworms glowing VERY brightly, but they didn't look like that to the naked eye. You still have to look very carefully and slowly. All in all, I had fun with my sister looking for them! It works!!! I'll be doing this again!

FUN FUN FUN!!!
Wow that last photo in particular is very impressive... But not to naked eye, huh? Hm.

Now, as I mentioned, I bought those yellow tinted glasses. If you watch crime shows on
TV, they usually put on ORANGE tinted glasses. Anyway, these are supposed to show up the UV
fluorescent things better.

What kind of camera are you using? I only have my iPhone 4 and iPad Air. So not sure how well they'll take pictures in the dark, but I'll also try putting the tinted glasses over the camera lense.

iPhone 5. This thing takes FABULOUS pictures. It's my favorite thing about this phone!

It definitely made them LESS INCONSPICUOUS. Maybe even obvious, but you still have to look closely. My light was small. The little flashlight has a 1" diameter and is only about 4" long. My mother went ahead and ordered a larger one after I told her what I was doing with it (for me...idk why she did that, but I thanked her and accepted my future gift )

Do they have those glasses at hardware stores? I'll wait and see what you think of yours!

This is a fascinating thread and a great topic. I never thought about looking for creatures at night like that. Some really good information here and I feel very privileged to be able to look at it. Thank you all very much.

Stick bugs light up like the 4th of July!

I may have to get one. There's other things that only come out at night -- slugs, the budworms that eat my petunias. I wonder if any of them fluoresce?

Make sure you get one that is specifically for cat urine or bug seeing.

I think we need to rename this thread and omit the "no go" part.