Tomato WORMS! HELP!

[DuckyGurl]

Ack! Our brand new-delish tomatoes are infested with those green caterpillars! HELP! Does anything work to eradicate them!? Anything would be appreciated.....

 

[edible_chicken]

dust sevin on the tomato plants and that'll take care of the problem. sorry to hear you have that problem. with all this heat we are getting, its causing bottom rot to our tomatoes. nearly all of the tomatoes are affected!

 

[saddina]

Bacilis thurgacide, otherwise known as BT, it's an organic pesticide made from chrysthimum flowers. Safe for people and animals. in the meantime, your chickens will love any you pick off and flick at them.

 

[sgtmom52]

Pick them off and feed to your chickens!

If you find any tomato horn worms with what looks like little grains of white rice on them take those and put in a jar with a couple of tomato leaves and a screen lid. Leave the jar outside in the shade. The white things are the cocoons of the larva of a tiny parasitic wasp that eats the tomato horn worm, when the wasps hatch they will be able leave the jar through the screen and head out to look for more tomato horn worms to lay eggs on.

 

[redsoxs]

I had them terrible about a week ago - I was diligent and they only did minor damage. Chickens were a little hesitant at first but soon learned that if I was holding something green as I coming out of the garden, it was snack time!!

 

[Redcatcher]

Unless you have more than 100 tomato plants or hundreds of worms, I would just pick them off and dispose of them or feed them to the chickens. I have never had 3-4 of the on my plants at any given time but they sure can do a lot of damage. Can't find them? Look on the ground for piles of worm dung.

 

[Dipsy Doodle Doo]

Hi! I just pick hornworms off and feed them to the chickens (but I think the hawk moths are neat). Informational page on hornworms
BT is 'Bacillus thuringiensis', not to be confused with Pyrethrum.

Lisa

 

[fuzziebutt]

Sevin dust. And to stop the bottom of the tomatoes rotting, pick them while they are still green, and let them ripen in the window, or on the porch. That's what we had to do with the roma's.

 

[HEChicken]

Quote:
This is my solution too. I don't like to put any pesticide, whether certified "safe" or not, onto foods I will be eating, since so many times in the past things have been deemed safe only to find after decades of use that it is actually a carcinogen. This time of year, I go out every morning with a collecting cup and check the leaves of all of my vegies for pests. I actually find it rather relaxing or therapeutic or something, to collect so much free protein to feed the girls.