budworm question?

I have 4 plants that are outdoors, and on one of them I found a little caterpillar, when I squashed that shit it was fucking green. But what's confusing me is that my plant is only 5 weeks old an I thought those bud worms don't come around till flower time or do they hit you during vegg and then just go buckwild when flower comes? Can someone inform my noob ass on these piece's of shit. I neem my plants once a week so I'm tripping

being only 5 weeks old u should be able to spray, especially the foliage, with spinosad. it works great for caterpillars and worms. GL

I've been using a mixture of neem and light dish soap, so I don't know how this little fucker got there, cause he definetly wasn't there yesterday when I was scoping out everything. Is neem not effective on these little shits

A good practice for preventing caterpillars is to keep your outdoor plants under netting; this will prevent moths from accessing your plants and laying eggs on them.

Ya that's what I'm going to do, ill just put a very fine netting over it