As you may already know you are not the only thing that likes your perfectly ripened tomatoes. There are many different pests out there who love your plants too. Anyone who has their own garden also has a tomato plant or two. However, these individuals also know that controlling the pests that prey on their unsuspecting plants can be hard. Here are two of the most common insects and exactly how you should deal with them.

The first insect is called a tomato hornworm. It will eat all of the foliage and leave the stems bare. It will also take bites out of the fruit. You will know you definitely have hornworms, no question about it, if you find the little black spots that they leave behind, (probably droppings like a mouse might leave behind). When you notice these little black droppings you should look through the stems and leaves sooner rather than later. You will more than likely find small, (about ½ inches all the way to 5 inches), green larvae. They will also have white stripes on them as well as a horn on their back.

In order to get rid of tomato hornworms the only thing you can really do is pick them off by hand and kill them. In order to keep more from forming you should spray the plants with Bacillus thuringiensis. Bacillus thuringiensis, or BT for short, is a bacterium. It is not harmful to wildlife or humans just those pesky tomato pests and insects. There are also other, more toxic, sprays you can use such as, pyrethrin.

Another harmful insect for tomato’s are Whiteflies. These small 1 ½-inch flies are white in color, hence the name whitefly. They flutter around like butterfly’s and get the sap off the underside of the tomato plant leaves. They have little larvae, about the size of a pin-head, are covered with a film that is white in color and filmy in texture. The larvae will also eat the sap off the leaves. As the numbers of these insects grow so does the yellow color and weakness of the plant leaves.

In order to control whiteflies you can make a trap or buy one. To make one use a yellow card, like a yellow index card. Put a sticky substance on one side of the card. You can use a substance like Tanglefoot. Place the card near the plant with sticky side facing towards the tomato plant. You should also use an insecticidal soap to cover the plant with. It will be pointless for you to use toxic chemicals because these insects actually build up resistance to these. Read the rest of this entry »

Among gardeners who like to stay natural and environment friendly, a no-till policy is not uncommon. they realize that plowing into the soil loosening and breaking it up only helps with soil erosion, helping the rain and the wind blow off topsoil, and of course helping the rain drain off pesticides into the ground. But over the last couple of years, they haven’t been able to keep up their commitment. They’ve called in the tilling machines to rip up the soil, and to mix in herbicides. They’ve had enough of terribly stubborn weeds that seem to suffocate every other garden plant around. They are the new scourge of the gardening enthusiast, the gardening problem to end all gardening problems – they are the superweeds.

It’s the same thing that has happened with people and bacteria. People have been recklessly popping pills for decades now and bacteria and other organisms have just become accustomed to them; health documentaries on the Discovery Channel can’t stop trumpeting how the future will just about be all about battling tenacious super germs that will just laugh at all standard drugs you could throw at them. We will have to take to especially powerful drugs of the kind we usually use only for cancer chemotherapy. In the same way, gardeners across the country are beginning to battle all the gardening problems that come from super weeds – with the use of super toxic herbicides. When they can, they’ll try to rip the weeds out by hand; but it just takes too much time and effort.

Farming and gardening in this country have turned full circle – to a time when no one had any weapon against weeds and pests other than their own to low-tech hands. Using super powerful herbicides will only result in poisoned plants, lower yields, and health problems. It all started 10 years ago in a farm and Delaware that grew soybeans. It was just one kind of superweed back then, and it seemed like they would find a way around it. All of a sudden though, everyone’s reporting gardening problems of this kind of a dozen varieties that affect every kind of garden plant and every kind of farm crop. At a time when everyone’s so enthusiastic about genetically modified soybeans, cotton and corn, seeing what happens when a plant is genetically modified (by nature in reaction to unnatural problems) should lead to a bit of caution. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone loves tomatoes, especially homegrown vine ripened ones. However, tomatoes, like humans are prone to certain diseases that could overtake them and kill them. Here is an explanation of the most common ones.

First, there is Early Blight. Early Blight is a disease that will affect foliage, the fruit, and the stems of the tomato plant. It causes the leaves to die and this means that the fruit can die from exposure to the sun. Crowded or undernourished plants are more susceptable.

Next there is Gray Leaf Spot. This disease will hurt the leaves of the tomato plant. It first attacks the oldest leaves. It kills off the leaves from the inside out. This will keep fruit from growing.

The third disease is called Leaf Blight. Leaf Blight will attack both fruit and leaves of tomatoes. This type of disease spreads rapidly. This is actually what caused the Irish Potato famine.

Another disease is the Septoria Leaf Spot disease. This is the same type of disease as Late Blight. It affects the oldest leaves and then the newer leaves.

Southern Blight is another disease that affects tomatoes. It is a white moldy substance on the bottom part of the stem closest to the soil. Most often these plants that are affected will just collapse.

The next type of disease is Verticilium Wilt. Although the name says wilt the leaves of the tomatoes that have this disease do not actually wilt at all. This disease will keep the tomatoes from taking in the water and nutrients it needs to grow and be healthy. Read the rest of this entry »