Varmints!

[Worth1]

Here is a varmint that stood in the road for us it is a youn caribou.
Attachment 27390

Worth

[FILMNET]

I love to cut out leaves and stems from friends tomato plants. I never let them get dense at all even if fruit is in the dense leaves. They need some sun anyway, takes only 5 minutes just cut junk off so i can see through the plant. Poor Lakelady, all this work you have done is nice of you to try. But hopefully now see that less plants growing nice, is better them all plants dieing. I only have 18 plants and this are enough for me.

[lakelady]

Do you have to reapply BT or Spinosad after it rains? We had heavy rain last night and I don't want to take chances that it washed off, it's war now!

Filmnet, this year I really worked so hard on these plants and everything was looking great. I have to thin out the foliage on a lot of them so I can actually see through. Thick foliage does also make it harder to spray and get all the leaves. But it has been so much work to take care of all these plants too, and this year I am working from home so I have the time, next year, who knows. It IS an awful lot of spraying, picking through, maintaining though. On the other hand, if I did not have so many plants, I would have lost too much to the animals so at least I do have enough tomatoes on the plants for us to eat.

[FILMNET]

Yes i understand, sorry about your troubles, thank goodness i never get varmints here or nasty worns. This year i did not use mulch at all because bugs will live in it after rain. Here is my garden this morning after nasty rain last night, squash and cucumbers are growing high this year, only 12 plants here with peppers plants around the tomato plants.

[tjg911]

bt does wash off with rain and needs to be reapplied.

if these worms are caterpillars then bt will kill them. they have to eat to get the bt into them so some tomato loss will occur. if they keep coming all summer then you'll lose some tomatoes but kill them. what a terrible thing to deal with. at least tomato horn worms are from eggs hatched on the plants and have to be laid directly on the plant. if the moths don't relay eggs then 1 spray should do the trick, reapplying if it rains before the cats can eat.

tom

[lakelady]

Filmnet, your garden looks beautiful! Very lush and green.

Tom, I was reading your post wondering why cats would eat tomato leaves, lol...duh! Last year I found a few hornworms, but fortunately by the time I saw them, the wasps had laid eggs on them so I pulled them off the plant and put them elsewhere to hatch the wasps. No big deal. These army worm types are awful. I look and don't find any eggs, but my plants are quite large so it's no easy task.

It's going to rain again today so I'll have to get out and spray tomorrow.

[tjg911]

Antoniette,

i'd leave the cats on the plants once they have been parasitictized by the wasps. maybe the moths won't lay eggs if they see the cats? they seem to stop feeding, never saw any damage once they had egg sacs on them. the only reason i knew i had thw on some plants is i saw the egg sacs. there were about 10 or 12 cats, all 1" and i found 2 very large fat ones without any egg sacs. somehow those 2 fell to the ground and OOPS i stepped on them.

tom

[lakelady]

last year I had the hornworms with parasitic wasps but they didn't do any real damage. This year, these ugly brown disgusting caterpillars are going to town, but they seem to be concentrated on one row only. I found two more yesterday that met their demise, and one of them was crawling over my giant tomato! Thank goodness I spotted him before he dug in for a good meal.

[tjg911]

have you tried bt on them?

tom

[lakelady]

Hey Tom, I was going to spray them this weekend, but we had some major thunderstorms passing through. Depending on weather, I'll spray again tonight. I was doing my usual wander through the garden with my coffee this morning and found another big fat one. He's history now.

I was using spinosad, but I also have BT so I'll try that today. thanks!