tomatoes again - I have met the enemy and they is ugly

[hime]

I had two tomato plants. After the rain last night, and with all the tomatoes on it, it couldn't really stand up from the pounding. It wasn't staked or trimmed properly, I looked more upon this whole experience as being an experiment and I'm okay with how I did. I went ahead and yanked up the plant, since all the tomatoes had been hit by bugs.

Here's what one of the tomatoes from the other plant looked like. Only this one had been infested.



On the pulled plant, there were also some small turd like things on some of the tomatoes.

And here's what my enemy looks like. He's a small green worm thingy. Also on the napkin with him is the brown cluster of what appears to be eggs between one of the 5 leaves and the tomato. They seemed to be eating away a bit at the outside skin of the fruit.



Apologies for the quality of the pics. Still no media reader or decent sized media for my digicam... and my roomie quit his job and probably won't find one, which means I'll be paying the rent and bills. Poorly. Whee!

[hime]

Curled up worm on the left, egg like things on the right.

And the tomato plant is in the compost bin, and the tomatoes themselves will go in my worm bin.

[hime]

Well, ok, that was tomato hookworm, and putting the plant into my compost bin was exactly the wrong thing to do. Whee! Thanks!

I guess the hookworms won't get far in my worm bin though. I hope.

[sandih]

Get used to it. You can't pull up your tomatoes every time you get pests. Get Howard's book on organic vegetable growing and also get the Texas Bug Book to help identify the pests. Then learn about the organic ways to combat them and how to keep your plants happy and healthy.

[hime]

It's the end of the season, and the plants were mostly an initial experiment anyway to prove I could grow anything. I'll do better starting in spring.

Any suggestions on what to grow in the meantime to maintain/replenish the soil?

[Newt]

Here's a site with info on cover crops.
http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/covercrop.html#principle

Dragonfly posted a list of veggies that can be planted in late summer and early fall. It is probably too late to do now, but you might want to save this for next year.
http://www.dirtdoctor.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1265

By the way, there are Braconid wasps that parasitize the tomato horn worm. Here's a pic of the eggs on the back of the horn worm and a pic of the wasp.
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/imagemap/taexmap/harris/teamtomato/tomato28.jpeg
http://www.gov.on.ca/OMAFRA/english/crops/facts/beneficialf23.jpg

Newt