Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Finally. . . but Yikes!

I finally have some ripe tomatoes!


However I noticed more and more of my leaves with spotting like below and yellowing of the foliage.  I decided to spray the plants with a neem oil product that is a fungicide that should help with leaf spotting issues.  The neem oil also works as an insecticide.


So when I went to cut off all the damaged foliage I was startled by this guy on the ground at the base of one of my tomatoes.  I believe this is a tomato hornworm, YUCK!  Needless to say I disposed properly of this fellow so that he can not get at my tomatoes anymore.  According to the man at the garden center normally you will only find 1 maybe 2.  I am hoping that this one was a loner.


I shouldn't have been too surprised to find him.  For a week or so I have seen these droppings under the same tomato plant.  When I decided that my plants looked liked were going to be over taken by a fungal or pest issue if I didn't do something soon I decided to look up different tomato diseases and pests.  According to some reading the tomato hornworm has telltale droppings, I just wasn't sure if these were those droppings.

The bottom portion of my plants look a bit naked but I am hoping that between disposing of the diseased foliage, taking care of my pest, spraying with the neem oil Friday, and today with a copper soap product that my plants will begin to rebound from their many issues.

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