The past couple of mornings, I've gone out and found that sometime in the night something has been snacking on my tomatoes, but I have no idea what. I can't find any bugs or anything on the plants, and it's not huge bites or anything. What do you guys use for an all around general pest prevention option?
I bought a 5 lbs bag of cayenne pepper... sprinkle it on the dirt around the plants, and it seems to have stopped the carnage.
Yeah, I have a big can of that in the pantry, I'll throw some down later today and see if that helps at all.
Yeah that's definitely critter, not bug damage. Try the pepper Nett suggested. They sell "squirrel proof" birdseed laced with capsicum dust because it works.
@jdoogie That's a rabbit/squirrel, if there's a groundhog around your area, could be that as well. Ask me how I know...
I used to have squirrel damage that was just a single bite with 2 obvious teeth lines, and it was always on riper fruit. Squirrels could behave differently in another area I suppose. I bet this was a rabbit or groundhog.
I'm also assuming rabbits since they're always out an about in our yard. Our property backs right up to a wooded area of a city park, so there's always various animals flitting about. I took Nett's suggestion and put down the cayenne all around the base of the plant so we'll see if that helps ward off whatever's been attacking so far.
Update: I tried the cayenne trick; however, my wife caught the offending critter in action and it's a squirrel, so they're just climbing up the cages and bypassing the pepper altogether. So, next step is to try making up some sort of pepper spray to spray on the leaves around the plants to see if that stops them.
If you have a large area to protect I am a fan of hot wires. They sure worked on my dog. With small critters that can jump you have to get creative with the placement since a body part needs to touch the ground to feel the charge.
No, this is just a couple of large planter pots in a corner of my back patio, so I don't really need anything too big to cover.
Tomatoes! I trimmed lower leaves off hard last weekend. Maybe it is just my imagination but it does seem like the tomatoes immediately above that point got slightly bigger.
I drop tomato trim in the garden to feed the decomposers, so that they'll leave my shit alone. The whole garden is like this at night.
You're not wrong... as soon as I pruned the fuck out of mine, I swear the fruit doubled in size overnight.
Not supposed to compost tomatoes plant trimmings. Leads to more bacteria and fungal infections. I put it all on the burn pile. Im jealous as the last 4 or so plants, out of 24, look worse than Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.
Having an issue with the wicking beds... I should not have trusted a nail gun into the ends of big boards as much as I did. Part of the side walls are pushing apart now because of the water/soil outward pressure. I've got some long lag bolts I'll be drilling/screwing into place once the garden is done and I can move some of the soil back and reposition the boards. I knew I should have used some construction adhesive or bolts, but I was lazy. Learn from my laziness!
Luckily it's only 1 corner on 2 boxes, so that's good... but I'll be tapping all the ends when I fix this one, just in case.
Sorry your plants didn't thrive. You'll have to get under that landscaping fabric to investigate this fall.Do you have clay heavy soil? I'll keep that in mind when it is time to wrap up the summer veggie patch. Luckily these plants have been really healthy. I thought my peppers had some bacterial something but I forgot to treat them with the copper I bought and everything grew out healthy so who tf knows. Here's a nice sized beefsteak I just picked last night. I've been impressed with how meaty and tasty these fruits are.
Yeah we have terrible clay soil. I had scraped off 8-10 inches and filled with a local garden soil made to drain. I think Im going to add a few more inches of the soil or more organic material to beef the soil back up.
I figured it was since you seem to have water retention and draining issues. We had heavy clay where I dug my first garden in Alabama. I am generally a fan of "no-till" gardening but it takes time to develop a clay heavy bed, plus rotating in new organic material. I do think the nature of the clay heavy soil allowed me to grow some hot fucking peppers though. Dunno if you've tried growing any.