What's Eating My Tomatoes?
Tomatoes draw a crowd. Most damage traces to a short list of suspects, and each one leaves a different calling card — read the evidence before you reach for a spray.
The usual suspects
Tomato hornworm
The signs: Large ragged holes in upper leaves, whole stems stripped bare seemingly overnight, and dark pellet droppings on the leaves below.
What it looks like: A fat green caterpillar up to four inches long with white V-shaped marks and a harmless 'horn' on its rear — shockingly good at hiding in plain sight.
What to do: Handpick at dusk and drop in soapy water. If one is covered in small white cocoons, leave it — those are parasitic braconid wasps finishing your pest control for you. Bt works on heavy infestations while worms are small.
Aphids
The signs: Curled or yellowing new growth with a sticky sheen, sometimes black sooty mold. Ants marching up the stems are a tell — they farm aphids for honeydew.
What it looks like: Pinhead-sized green, black, or pink soft-bodied insects clustered on stem tips and leaf undersides.
What to do: Blast off with a hard stream of water — most won't climb back. Insecticidal soap for outbreaks; avoid broad sprays that kill the ladybugs eating them.
Stink bugs
The signs: Pale yellow or white corky spots just under the skin of ripening fruit — cloudy, sunken patches rather than holes.
What it looks like: Shield-shaped brown or green bugs about half an inch long that release an odor when crushed.
What to do: Handpick mornings when they're sluggish, keep nearby weeds down, and pick fruit at first blush to ripen indoors during heavy pressure.
Cutworms
The signs: Young transplants severed cleanly at the soil line overnight — the classic 'healthy yesterday, stump today.'
What it looks like: Gray-brown soil caterpillars that curl into a C when you scratch the soil an inch deep near the stump.
What to do: Collar transplants with a cardboard ring pushed an inch into the soil. Old-fashioned, nearly foolproof.
Flea beetles
The signs: Dozens of pinhead 'shotgun' holes peppering the leaves of young plants, worst in spring.
What it looks like: Tiny shiny black beetles that spring away like fleas when you brush the plant.
What to do: Row cover over young plants until established; healthy mature tomatoes outgrow the damage.
Hungry mammals
The signs: A half-eaten tomato still on the vine at picking height, or fruit that vanishes entirely, means squirrel, chipmunk, or rat — not an insect.
What it looks like: Damage appears in a single feeding visit, often the ripest fruit first, sometimes with fruit carried a few feet away.
What to do: Harvest at first blush and ripen on the counter; netting or a motion sprinkler for repeat offenders.
When it's not a pest at all
A black, leathery, sunken patch on the bottom of the fruit is blossom end rot — a watering and calcium problem, not a pest. Yellowing lower leaves with brown target-ring spots is early blight, a fungus. Neither will show bite marks or droppings.
Or just point your phone at it
Snap a photo of the leaf, the bug, or the droppings, and Harold — the advisor built into Homestead Paradise — names what he sees, tells you friend or foe, and what he'd do next. Honest when he's unsure, and careful where it counts.
Put Harold's Eyes on it — free 14-day trial