What has been eating my young tomato plants? Voila!

[Muse]

The last few years something's been severely setting back at least some of the 6 Early girl tomato plants I plant from a six pack every spring. The damage can be tremendous, to the point where over night I can see a plant reduced by 75% or more, up to 90% sometimes over the course of a night or two. This year, two of the plants seem to have escaped damage almost completely. But four have been chewed some, with two having been chewed a lot, i.e. reduced by around 70%. Below see my best and worst plants for comparison, worst first.

Most chewed-up young tomato plant (probably over 70% consumed):

Least chewed-on young tomato plant (it's been reduced maybe 20%):

As you can see in the first picture, I placed a little collar around the base of the plants. I only did this after I saw a lot of damage. I usually have those to guard against tomato cut worms, although I don't remember a seedling being felled by them, so didn't put the collars on to start with this year.

When I planted the seedlings 19 days ago I sprinkled Sluggo to control slugs and sprinkled on some diazinon flakes I have from several years ago. They don't sell that anymore, I don't know if it's still effective I've had it so long, but I put that on in a light amount hoping it would deter or kill earwigs, which are prevalent here, especially in my compost pile. I worked in a lot of compost before planting.

I thought it was maybe birds nipping at the young plants, and put on wire teepees I made from chicken wire, but I don't think that prevented whatever is causing the damage. I went to a few websites about tomato pests but didn't see anything that seemed to pertain to the damage I'm seeing.

Whatever is chewing on it is attacking the outer growth on established stems. It's not attacking the growing tips of new growth.

I suppose it could be earwigs, don't know what else it could be. Could earwigs possibly do that kind of damage??? I don't see caterpillar droppings on the plants, so I believe that would rule out tomato hornworm caterpillars. I also don't see the slimy trails of slugs.

What do you think may be causing this?

 

[turtile]

Well, given that you aren't seeing what is attacking the tomato, I'd go with hornworms since they blend in well or rabbits. Only beetles leave similar damage but they stand out.

Earwigs eat tomatoes but the damage is not like your pictures.

 

[zardthebuilder]

i used to have a lot of hornworms. i have had good success with Dipel Dust as a preventative measure for hornworms. but, with the plants in the picture, i don't think it is hornworms. the plants are so small, that you should be able to see them. looks like the stems are gone, and my hornworms left behind a lot stem. i don't know much about rabbits. would your wire teepees keep rabbits away?

http://www.******************.com/fertilome-dipel-dust-p-1714.html

ETA: URL is messing up. it is ******************. that is weird. let me add a few spaces, "do my own pest control"

 

[schmuckley]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=silJoHrXsIc

 

[dphantom]

rabbits

 

[Muse]

I don't believe that rabbits is a possibility. I've lived here over 30 years, never seen or heard about a rabbit in this environment. Of course, some people likely have them in their back yard. Is it possible there's a wild rabbit? Maybe one that escaped from someone around here... yes. Possible. Seems unlikely, especially because I've had this problem the last couple years, maybe more. I live more than a mile from the hills. Unlikely a wild rabbit came down from the hills to here in the residential neighborhoods, and AFAIK they don't live in the hills around here to begin with. I golf in those hills, never heard of them there or seen one.

I did look for caterpillars, not what I'd call an exhaustive look, but I looked and didn't see any or droppings. I could look better. However, with caterpillars the damage generally gets progressively worse as the caterpillars get bigger. Of course, T Hornworms get huge as caterpillars go. Also, in the past years this type of damaged stopped after a while and the plants recovered. Caterpillar damage would have continued and gotten worse in terms of area-of-plant-eaten/day. I've found hornworms on my tomatoes in the past, but it's been a number of years since I last found any.

There's something of a pattern, possibly. The 6 plants are planted in a row, about 21 inches apart. The northerly 2 show little damage, especially the one most northerly (in the bottom picture of OP). The most attacked are (going south), #4 (in picture), and #5. Seems like that pattern may be significant.

I've gone out at night a few times with a flashlight and seen nothing eating, scattering, no clues.

 

[dphantom]

I do not know. From the look of the damage, that was my first guess. Rabbits will sometimes eat the leaves of young tomato plants. It did not look like insect damage that would be typical. JMO

Set out a live trap and see if you catch one.

 

[Muse]

I do not know. From the look of the damage, that was my first guess. Rabbits will sometimes eat the leaves of young tomato plants. It did not look like insect damage that would be typical. JMO

Set out a live trap and see if you catch one.

Ah, well I do have a live trap, a good one, I could set it and see if I catch something. Suggestions for bait?

BTW, the last couple of days I sprayed the plants with Safer Soap. Don't know if it's helped, but I don't see further damage, nor have the damaged plants obviously grown, however there's been a fair amount of cloud cover. I think/hope they are at the stage where growth will overpower whatever's doing that damage. That's what eventually happened the last couple years.

 

[zardthebuilder]

I've gone out at night a few times with a flashlight and seen nothing eating, scattering, no clues.

sounds like you have a good excuse to get a thermal camera...

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2415683&highlight=vermin

 

[turtile]

Most mammals are nocturnal and likely scatter before you even can shine a light on them. If it's not hornworms, it's some sort of animal.

Apples and peanut butter work well.

 

[dphantom]

Suggestions for bait?

old fruit or vegetables, apple cores that sort of thing. If those do not work, fresher lettuce and greens.

I like the thermal camera idea. Your going out with a flashlight at night is not likely to catch a varmint in the act.

The soap may be acting as a deterrent to the rabbits or maybe you do have insect damage. The plants should recover easily from that damage assuming whatever was eating them is out of the picture.

 

[Muse]

sounds like you have a good excuse to get a thermal camera...

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2415683&highlight=vermin

Hmm, what I see at that link looks to work with iPhones and Android. I have a Windows phone (Nokia Lumia 520). Nice idea. I wonder if a motion sensor that activates a camera of some kind, either with flash or sufficiently light sensitive to not need one. Maybe pretty expensive to set up, though.

 

[Muse]

Most mammals are nocturnal and likely scatter before you even can shine a light on them. If it's not hornworms, it's some sort of animal.

Apples and peanut butter work well.

I may do that for tonight (bait a trap). The plants are getting steadily taller and I haven't noticed reduction the last two nights. I think the leaves might be fairly inaccessible to whatever was feeding on them.

Could this be squirrels? There are many around here and I've been waging war against them for some years. They've eaten sometimes as much as 30% of my kabocha squash crop. Last year I employed a system that seemed to work in preventing damage from them, spraying them with a homemade solution of cayenne pepper. Only one squash was eaten, one that was about 10 feet up, hanging in one of the plum trees. I couldn't reach that with my sprayer. I could try that spray on the tomato plants, I guess!

I have seen possums around here (not often!), even racoons (rarer still), and, of course, rats. Skunks are not out of the question... I don't think I want to trap a skunk!!!

 

[Muse]

Voila! No pesky wabbit in my yard... Alfred Hitchcock was right! I just looked out the window and saw a medium-sized bird take a nip from leafage at the stem of one of the tomato plants. This confirms my original suspicion that it was birds. The bird's body size is about that of the average fist. I guess it's light brown (I'm total green blind, so I am not good with many colors). My teepees aren't big enough to accommodate the plants, now, but even so I plopped 4 of them on the 4 plants that aren't doing as well. I have some more chicken wire in the garage, I'm going to make larger teepees!

I think it's birds that have been attacking my just-emerged kabocha squash seedlings too. A few years ago I made ~150 little wire teepees to cover the seedlings. After a couple of days the birds lose interest in those. Not so with the tomatoes. They need teepees at least 1.5 feet tall.

 

[cabri]

Just get netting and cover the complete garden area to a height 1-2 feet higher than the plants will be expected to get. Lay it over a frame which will make it easy to remove when working on the garden.

 

[Muse]

Just get netting and cover the complete garden area to a height 1-2 feet higher than the plants will be expected to get. Lay it over a frame which will make it easy to remove when working on the garden.

At this point that bird has a hard time reaching the leaves from the ground. I don't believe the birds will try to dive bomb the vines or light on them. In general, my strategy is to cut off side suckers until the tomato plants are about 3 feet tall. So, that bird won't have much of anything to eat in another few days. I brought the chicken wire out from my garage and will make bigger teepees, 6 of them, for the next week and ensuing years' crops. They stack!

The plants' main stems are getting taller, making leaves out of reach to at least that species of bird. I think most of the plants at this point are out of reach.

 

[Moonbeam]

At this point that bird has a hard time reaching the leaves from the ground. I don't believe the birds will try to dive bomb the vines or light on them. In general, my strategy is to cut off side suckers until the tomato plants are about 3 feet tall. So, that bird won't have much of anything to eat in another few days. I brought the chicken wire out from my garage and will make bigger teepees, 6 of them, for the next week and ensuing years' crops. They stack!

The plants' main stems are getting taller, making leaves out of reach to at least that species of bird. I think most of the plants at this point are out of reach.

Sure the bird wasn't eating a bug off your tomato plant?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I'm just jealous that you can put tomatoes in the ground in late Feb / early March.

You bastard.

 

[Muse]

Sure the bird wasn't eating a bug off your tomato plant?

Quite sure. That bird (along with possibly others) ate over 70% of 2 of the 6 plants, and somewhat less of the others.

I made larger teepees a few days ago, much bigger than the others. Two of the plants have outgrown even those teepees. At this point the plants are tall enough where an average bird has trouble reaching the lower leaves, partly because the plants have continued to grow taller and also because the lower leaves have largely been eaten off already.

 

[Muse]

I'm just jealous that you can put tomatoes in the ground in late Feb / early March.

You bastard.

It hasn't always been that way, but the climate has changed around here (S.F. Bay Area). I used to plant my tomatoes just about at this point in time, averaging maybe 1-2 days after the spring equinox (e.g. March 22). But the last 2-3 years I've been able to plant in February. It seemed like a strange anomaly a couple of years ago but now it's feeling like the new normal. Winter virtually skipped its normal appearance this year! It's been amazing. Not having central heating in the house, I can't complain. I used to have to endure cold indoor temperatures for at least two months. The last few weeks have been not different from June weather here except for shorter days.