Insect pest plague is one of the most frustrative aspects of tomato plant horticulture . Your plant life may look healthy and contain plenty of yield one twenty-four hours , and before you’re able to get to the ripen yield a tomato gadfly insect has beat you to it , tunnel inscrutable holes . General - use chemical insecticides may avail , but they may also down your best allies against these invaders : ladybugs , mantid and other louse predators . Tomato pest identification can avail you tailor-make your control methods to target the pests and save the good insects .

Stink Bugs

Stink bugs have gray or green shield - shaped cuticle and farm to about 3/4 in long . They eat on the tomato plant fruit and cause yellowish spots ; the yield becomes flaccid and spongy underneath the spots . They also leave alone their orchis in clumps on the leaves . If you recover fetor bugs or their eggs on your tomato plant , you’re able to hand - beak them off and put them in a bucket of oleaginous water to kill them .

Snails and Slugs

Snails and slug attack the yield ; snails eat the Earth’s surface and slugs burrow into the yield , leaving large atrocious hollows . Slugs , which are snail without shell , are between a quarter inch to seven inches long , depend on species . you’re able to discourage these pests by using cages or stakes to corroborate the plants and keep the fruit off the ground , and by placing slug beer traps around the plant .

Tomato Hornworm

This is a green caterpillar that gets its name from the horn on its rearward oddment . The insect grows three to five inches long . It eats both the leaves and the yield and may leave great hole behind . If you find just a few tomato hornworms on your plants , you could hand - pick them and kill them in a bucket of soapy water ; for large infestations you could apply B thuringiensis , a bacteria which attacks and kills the caterpillar but is harmless to the great unwashed and pet .

Tomato Pinworm

The tomato Enterobius vermicularis is a tiny cat ; it turn to about a tail column inch in length . You may notice the small holes it leaves behind in the yield and leaves of the tomato before you see the worm itself . The best dominance of this pest is to off and dispose of any leaves or fruit you find with tunnel in them and strip up all plant debris at the last of the season to prevent the worms from finding protection to subsist the winter .

Cutworms

The cutworm gets its name from the impairment it causes , cutting through the stems of young seedlings at land level . The cutworm is a small gray grub , one to two inches long ; if you honour cutworms around the base of your plants you could pick them off by hand . you could also protect your untried Lycopersicon esculentum seedling from cutworm by place a composition board choker or toilet paper curl around the base of the stem at planting time .

Flea Beetles

Flea beetle , list for their trend to jump when disturbed , are tiny ( .06 to .12 inch long ) black or browned beetles . They manducate on Lycopersicon esculentum leaves , but this damage is subaltern to the diseases that can accede through the wounds they leave in the plant . Insecticides containing carbaryl or permethrin are most effective at operate flea beetles .

Other Insects

These are a few of the insects that may snipe your Lycopersicon esculentum plants , but you may find others depending on your location . If you find insects that you ca n’t identify , you’re able to contact your local agricultural extension power for help with identification and ascendancy .

References

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