army type worms

[b54red]

I have been battling some type of army type worm for the past two weeks with BT applied to all my plants every 5 days. It has helped but I am still losing a few tomatoes each day to them. It started raining at noon today and is supposed to continue for the next 4 to 5 days. Besides fruit splitting and diseases cropping up in the 100% humidity I fear the worms may really get bad. If I see them increasing badly I will wait for a lull when it isn't supposed to rain for a few hours and hit the plants with a good spray of Sevin. I know it may be washed off in just a few hours but that is all it will take to remove a lot of worms fast. I have found the BT to be fairly ineffective in really rainy weather and have resorted to Sevin a few times with great success in the past.

I also keep my squash plant lower stem dusted with Sevin to prevent Squash Vine Borers. Hopefully I can get them dusted often enough to stop them from getting into the plants. I never got a chance to dust them today because every time I would think the rain had stopped it would start again; so I'll go out and apply it first thing in the morning to my squash plant stems. I have found this works wonderfully as long as I can keep a little on the stems without too long a gap without coverage. It is amazing how fast SVBs can strike.

Bill

[Worth1]

Not worms but glassy winged leaf hoppers and wee grasshoppers are frigging everywhere.
Worst crop I have seen in years.
Leaf hoppers will suck on okra buds before they bloom and cause them to abort.
They also cause diseases.
I'm sure the fruit boring worms are right around the corner.
Worth

[b54red]

I have only seen a few grasshoppers this year and they mostly ate foliage on my green beans and a few tomato and pepper leaves. Where they really hit me is my small citrus plants in containers which sit on the edge of the garden. Two years ago they nearly defoliated them during a rainy spell when I couldn't get any Sevin on them at all due to the constant rain. Sevin is the only thing other than spraying them directly with a contact killer that I have found the least bit effective against them. Luckily we don't have them as bad here as you do. Thank goodness.

Bill

[b54red]

I have only been picking my tomatoes for about two weeks now and my loses to these army type worms have been the worst I have ever had despite constant applications of BT. If this continues I will be forced to use Sevin to at least slow them down. It is really a drag each day to have to throw away a couple of one pound and up tomatoes every day for the past two weeks. My loses in pounds of fruit are huge since they have hit so many of my larger fruits. I would guess my loses off of 35 plants is running over one per plant right now and we have only just begun to pick tomatoes.

Bill

[Worth1]

Bill I have seen more confounded critters this year than I have ever seen in my life around here.
Some good some bad.
I even saw hornets and some strange yellow bellied bees on an agave I have blooming.

[brownrexx]

Army type worms? Any pictures?

[Worth1]

More than likely one of these.
I got hit hard one year, took out a whole pile of tomatoes while I was gone.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...8ELa3NhOAL9abw

[brownrexx]

Oh, I didn't know what Army type worms were. I call those Tomato fruitworms and they really are disgusting. They are the same thing as corn earworms.

I get a few of them but not really too many. Bt is supposed to help as is roto tilling in the Fall because it exposes the pupae to predation.

That does not help this year of course but I usually roto till once a year in the Fall so maybe that helps me with not having as many of this pest. Of course not living in the south may help me as well too. Ha, ha.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by brownrexx

Oh, I didn't know what Army type worms were. I call those Tomato fruitworms and they really are disgusting. They are the same thing as corn earworms.

I get a few of them but not really too many. Bt is supposed to help as is roto tilling in the Fall because it exposes the pupae to predation.

That does not help this year of course but I usually roto till once a year in the Fall so maybe that helps me with not having as many of this pest. Of course not living in the south may help me as well too. Ha, ha.

Street lights and outdoor security lights bring in bad moths by the droves.

On my tomato plant this year I saw a wilted looking leaf.
I went to inspect and it was covered on the underside with what looked like thousands of little worms.

I pinched it off and sprayed them with Windex that killed every one of them.
Glass cleaner and mineral oil with kerosene is my go to instant worm and insect killer.
Worth

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Worth1

Street lights and outdoor security lights bring in bad moths by the droves.

On my tomato plant this year I saw a wilted looking leaf.
I went to inspect and it was covered on the underside with what looked like thousands of little worms.

I pinched it off and sprayed them with Windex that killed every one of them.
Glass cleaner and mineral oil with kerosene is my go to instant worm and insect killer.
Worth

I don't even know what to call those little worms but I can assure you they don't stay small for long. They can totally defoliate a plant and destroy all the fruit just from the worms from one hatch like what you saw under the leaves. It is amazing how fast they grow and how many hatches of them can show up overnight. They have been fairly bad this year but the BT has worked better on them than on the army worms but it hasn't stopped them all. They will attack almost anything but they seem to prefer tomatoes and bell peppers. I have seen them on my beans, cucumbers, and squash also this season so they are all getting regular BT treatments. From one day to the next I had a beautiful bell pepper plant go to something that looked like the leaves were made of lace. I did use Sevin on that plant or I wouldn't still have it. BT is a bit slow killing those little things for some reason. I have sprayed new hatches only to find those little worms go from less than an eighth of an inch long to about a half an inch before they started drying up and dying from the BT. We are supposed to have rain for the next few days so I may have to just go out and use the Sevin if they get bad because it will get rid of most of them in less than 30 minutes.

Despite the worms, Early Blight, whiteflies, aphids and a few other choice pests my tomatoes are still producing very well. I need to lower them again as some of them are now almost two feet above the horizontal bar but it would just put too much fruit on the mulch for earwigs, slugs and pill bugs to ruin. Knock on wood, so far I haven't had a big problem with rats, mice, squirrels or birds. I'm sure they will start working on them when it gets good and dry.

Bill

[Worth1]

Bill I think they are a type of army worm maybe, I have no idea.
I walked that whole plant every day looking for any bad leaves bugs and such.
It wasn't until I sat down away from it about 30 feet that I saw the huge rage that used to be a big tomato leaf.
They are some sort of Skeletonizing worms.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Worth1

Bill I think they are a type of army worm maybe, I have no idea.
I walked that whole plant every day looking for any bad leaves bugs and such.
It wasn't until I sat down away from it about 30 feet that I saw the huge rage that used to be a big tomato leaf.
They are some sort of Skeletonizing worms.

They can be hard to spot but I have gotten used to looking for them because they show up every year here. Every time I see what looks like a thin spot in the leaf of a plant I turn it over and look closely to see if I can see the little buggers wriggling. Sometimes when they have just hatched they are so small and so close to the color of the leaf they are really hard to spot. If you find a leaf with them on it there is a good chance there are more of them nearby, frequently on the same plant.

Bill