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    The Farmer Diaries

    Texas farmer defends maligned, misunderstood hornworm

    Marshall Hinsley
    Sep 14, 2014 | 6:00 am

    If it's your first time to grow tomatoes, you'll eventually walk out among your plants and find one or two of them stripped of their leaves. What may have been a robust tomato plant full of promise the day before will suddenly have become a skeleton of branches with a few green fruits remaining, and some of those may be partially eaten too.

    Demoralized, you can't help but seek an answer for this instant misfortune. You'll look among the bare branches, trying to grasp what has happened until your eyes are drawn to the last cluster of leaves still left on the plant. You reach out to touch the branch, which has an usually thick portion of stalk and — good golly, Miss Molly — the branch arches back and reaches out toward your hand, revealing itself to be the largest and most animated worm you've ever seen, almost as long and definitely as big around as a cigar.

    So voracious is a hornworm's appetite that it can denude a plant in a day, evoking the ire of gardeners who can't be blamed for wanting vengeance.

    The sight of a tobacco hornworm is shocking, even to experienced farmers. Each year when I find my first one for the season, I admit I am a little startled. Blending in so well with their host plant — usually a tomato but sometimes peppers, eggplants and potatoes — they escape detection until I'm face to face with them. Light green, with small spots that look like rows of eyes running down both sides of their plump bodies, they have an intimidating stinger at one end that accounts for why they're called hornworms.

    In fact, the horn has no sting to it at all; it appears to serve no purpose except to aid in its camouflage, looking like a bit of stem. Still, the caterpillar has a menacing look that keeps predators back and gives gardeners pause about pulling them off their plants.

    So voracious is their appetite that they can denude a plant in a day, evoking the ire of gardeners who can't be blamed for wanting vengeance. Look at the garden sprays and pesticides at garden centers, and you'll see this tomato enemy clearly illustrated on their labels — a bottle of revenge for under $10.

    In online gardening forums, you'll likely see questions from newbie growers asking how to get rid of the pest, along with outcries for the destruction they've caused. Seasoned growers offer plenty of solutions, giving answers that often fall into the territory of creative and indulgent cruelty, with methods of killing the worms that reveal their pleasure in executing their enemies.

    "I use two bricks, lay the hornworm down on one and smash it with the other," says a woman with a profile pic that looks innocent enough. "I stab them with scissors," offers an otherwise kind and gentle man. Someone else just throws them onto the hot asphalt of the road nearby and enjoys their slow death under the desiccating sun.

    The refrain among growers is clear: all hornworms must die.

    This detrimental garden guest turns into a beautiful hawk moth, an important pollinator of nighttime blooming flowers.

    What's not addressed in this chorus of death is that this detrimental garden guest turns into a beautiful hawk moth — so resembling a hummingbird when it drinks nectar from flowers that many people mistake it for one. Hawk moths hover over flowers and flit from one to the next, just like a hummingbird. Also known as sphinx moths, hawk moths use their extraordinarily long proboscises to drink nectar, usually at night, and are therefore important pollinators of nighttime blooming flowers.

    The few days a hornworm spends building up its bulk by eating garden plants is more than paid for when it turns into a hawk moth and pollinates gourds, ornamental flowers and wildflowers. As part of the ecosystem where we plant our gardens, it has a purpose. Therefore, the calls for eradication with no mercy are shortsighted and self defeating, especially when we consider the plight of pollinators worldwide, dying off from the exponentially increasing use of pesticides in industrial agriculture.

    I can't kill hornworms. I've seen their purpose, and I've witnessed their intelligence. On a warm afternoon when I was inspecting my hydroponically grown tomatoes, I came across a hornworm defending himself against a horsefly.

    The fly was trying to bite the hornworm on his back, but the hornworm gripped the branch where he was with two of his false feet and swung the rest of his body at the fly each time the fly approached, like a little green baseball bat. The fly was persistent, but so was the hornworm. I was both astonished and somewhat disturbed by the hornworm's apparent degree of self-awareness. He grew fatigued by the battle, and I could tell he was distressed.

    Killing conscious beings does not sit well with me. So to protect my tomatoes from loss, I choose other options that ensure the hornworms may fulfill their destiny.

    Sometimes I let them have the plant they're eating. If I plant a dozen or more tomato plants, I rarely find hornworms on more than one or two. I can spare a couple of plants.

    To protect my tomatoes from loss, I choose other options — like planting sacred datura — that ensure the hornworms fulfill their destiny.

    In fact, I may plant a few extra and designate them as sacrificial plants. When I find a hornworm, I gently pry them off my other tomato plants and place them on my sacrificial plants. If I should ever plant tomatoes for commercial production, I would dedicate a couple of rows for hornworms. It's a sort of payment to Mother Nature for the plot of ground I've taken over for my own purposes.

    Third, I plant sacred datura near my garden. Hornworms prefer sacred datura to tomatoes, so planting it near my garden draws the hornworms away from my crops.

    Datura is a native ornamental bush that blooms at night; its huge white flowers emit a fragrance that can fill the air for a hundred yards away. As sacred datura is a night-blooming plant, hawk moths feed from the flowers, thus the datura provides for the complete lifecycle of the insect.

    I've even begun to consider the potential of rearing hornworms in a brood chamber. By picking them off of my tomatoes and placing them in a container, I can feed the worms with sucker branches that I prune away from my tomato plants.

    The suckers need to come off the plants anyway; feeding them to hornworms seems a perfect use for the spare branches. The worms will feed on the branches for a few days and then start to wander around in the container, at which point they're ready to build their cocoon and transform into a hawk moth. Details on how to raise hornworms into adults are available from the Manduca Project website.

    I know that treating hornworms as guests in my garden who need to be accommodated, rather than pests that need to be eradicated, challenges the mentality of those who simply want to "get rid" of whatever's eating their plants. But aside from my appreciation of the unique and beautiful creatures they are at any stage of their lifecycle, I know that hornworms and the hawk moths they become serve a purpose in the natural habitat we occupy.

    I prefer to find a way to work with this habitat. If we simply rid ourselves of everything that bothers us, I'm afraid that we could eventually wind up with a world that's as flat and bereft of beauty as a Walmart parking lot.

    A tobacco hornworm feeds on a tomato plant in Marshall Hinsley's hydroponics test garden.

      
    Photo by Marshall Hinsley
    A tobacco hornworm feeds on a tomato plant in Marshall Hinsley's hydroponics test garden.
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    news/restaurants-bars

    French Food News

    Dallas restaurant Frenchie debuts in former Corner Bakery spot

    Teresa Gubbins
    Jun 23, 2025 | 2:43 pm
    Frenchie
    Frenchie
    Frenchie

    A French restaurant has debuted in an iconic Dallas space: Called Frenchie, it's a new concept from Travis Street Hospitality (Knox Street Bistro, Georgie) now open in North Dallas’ Preston Center Plaza in the former Corner Bakery space at 8420 Preston Center Plaza.

    Described as a quintessential French brasserie designed as a casual, everyday restaurant serving an all-day menu of lunch and dinner (with breakfast launching in the coming weeks), it's a new direction for Travis Hospitality, who are venturing outside of their usual Knox-Henderson neighborhood and their first venture without white-tablecloth service.

    The 4,000-square-foot restaurant offers seating for 150 in the dining room and bar, and a 1,200-square-foot covered patio with an indoor-outdoor bar.

    Frenchie is the natural evolution for founders Stephan Courseau and Daniele Garcia and culinary director, Bruno Davaillon, who have built a reputation on refined, French-forward restaurants like Knox Bistro, Georgie and Le PasSage. Together, they’ve tempered their French-born culinary heritage and fine-dining training with American sensibilities to create a more family-friendly concept designed for North Dallas’ premier mixed-use district.

    “Frenchie is an American French restaurant made by French guys who are now in the American mainstream,” Courseau said. “Frenchie represents the version of the French people we are today. It’s who we became over the years – authentic to who we are today.”

    While Frenchie embraces a more relaxed tone, the restaurant remains grounded in the fundamentals of classic French bistros. Design details include pewter bar tops, patinaed mirrors, brass sconces, rattan chairs, and rows of cozy banquettes.

    Chef Bruno Davaillon has created a menu that blends classic French comfort food with all-day versatility – think crepes, rillettes, quiche, poulet rôti, tartare de boeuf, salade Parisienne, and pâtes au pistou, served from morning coffee and croissants to onion soup and burgers at lunch, and steak frites and profiteroles for dinner. Frenchie will also have a cocktail menu and wine list—featuring small French wineries. The beverage menu includes a freezer martini—custom bottled and pre-chilled by Travis Street Hospitality’s Executive Mixologist, Mario Martinez, exclusively for Frenchie.

    As a thoughtful, everyday destination, Frenchie appeals to many facets of the Dallas dining scene, from families and busy parents to office workers and local shoppers. With refreshing joie de vivre, Frenchie represents an exciting new era for Travis Street Hospitality. After launching two new concepts last year – Le PasSage and Rose Café, both at The Terminal at Katy Trail – Frenchie is ready to plant new roots in a dynamic corner of the city.

    Founded by Stephan Courseau and Daniele Garcia, Travis Hospitality has been on the dining scene since 2013, the year after CultureMap Dallas launched, beginning with the debut of Le Bilboquet, which CultureMap Dallas was first to cover. This was followed by the opening of Knox Bistro, Georgie and The Georgie Butcher Shop (2019), Rose Café at Le PasSage and Le PasSage (2024).

    openings
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