If you want to repel aggravating garden pests without toxic pesticides, one gardener shared a natural solution that'll banish hornworms for good.
The scoop
Instagrammer Jil Hinds (@thepinkjardin) shared a viral video revealing the best hack to fend off hornworms, large caterpillars that love munching on tomatoes, peppers, and other plants in the nightshade family.
Hinds uses borage as a companion plant for her tomatoes to repel pesky worms. Borage is a flowering plant with blue, star-shaped flowers.
Companion planting is a common gardening practice, pairing plants together for mutual benefit. All you have to do is plant borage near your tomatoes, and your garden will prosper.
Borage repels hornworms, and Hind says many gardeners have observed tomatoes are tastier when grown next to borage. Additionally, borage attracts pollinators like bees and wasps, which are essential for fruit production.
"Borage is the perfect tomato companion plant. It's beautiful, it's easy to grow, it repels the hornworms, it's 100% edible, and the bees love it," Hind said in the video.
How it helps
Borage will benefit your garden and has many culinary uses. This hack will protect your tomatoes from pests while attracting pollinators, improving their overall quality, and eliminating the need for chemical repellents, which benefits the environment.
Borage is a great addition to your culinary arsenal, as its flowers and young leaves taste like cucumber. It can be a garnish in drinks, brewed into herbal tea, and added to a variety of dishes.
While applying chemical pesticides is an effective way to remove pests, it can be detrimental to the environment.
Pesticides can run off and contaminate soil, water supplies, and other vegetation. They can harm other animals and insects beyond the pests you are targeting, as chemicals will enter vegetation and bodies of water.
Attracting pollinators is a no-brainer to benefit both your garden and the environment. Pollinators are essential for thriving ecosystems and food supplies, as 35% of the world's food crops rely on pollinators to reproduce.
What everyone's saying
Fellow Instagram users were grateful for this simple hack to eliminate hornworms and benefit their gardens.
"This is a great tip," one Instagrammer wrote. "Those damn worms ate all my tomato plants."
"Thank you so much for that information," another user said.
A third Instagrammer added, "Who knew? Thanks for the tip!"
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