lots and lots of peppers...and a weird bug?

I visit my garden every day...sometimes I go out to say hi more than once in a day. It's always amazing to me how the plants change even just from morning to night.

Today I went to visit the garden and found a visitor...he was a HUGE green caterpillar of some variety. He was also quite rude...note the spike on his tail. He tried to get me with it...pesky guy.

Does anyone reading know what he is? Please let me know if you do. He was just over 3" long and fat as a marker.

(ETA he is a Tomato Hornworm...and I apparently need to go check for more of them.)

I suppose the worry I had over my tomatoes and peppers was unfounded...they are proving to be rather fecund lately. The tomato plants are as tall as me (I'm 5'4") or taller and the jalapenos are producing so many peppers I'll soon be eating poppers :D

I'm in need of recipes for sweet peppers...please share!

The zucchini are giving me an interesting issue...they are not getting very big. I tried leaving them on the vine and they rot so I have started cutting them off when they are about 7" long. They don't get any wider than the vines though...which seems odd to me. They taste ok...but they are narrow. My mom said her friends suggested lack of water. I'm not sure about that since you can see how large the plants are. They are taller than my 5yo son and have very prolific foilage. I'd think lack of pollination except that the cukes in the next bed have a ton of bees every morning (and are producing more cukes than I can eat.)

lemon cukes:

HUGE zuke plants:

typical zuke growth...

Ideas?

The pumpkin plants I sprouted last month are HUGE. They're grabbing everying in sight and spreading like mad. They all have blossoms now so it won't be long before we have pumpkins growing!

pumpkin blossoms:

The watermelon plants didn't do much. I'm disappointed but will try some other things next year. They weren't in the sunniest of locations initially so I am sure that impacted their growth.