Cloudy skies early with isolated thunderstorms developing late. Low 72F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%..

Cloudy skies early with isolated thunderstorms developing late. Low 72F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.

There’s nothing like a Georgia summer to encourage all the insects and diseases in the vegetable garden. The list often includes white fly and aphids, tomato hornworms, corn earworms, squash vine borers, spider mites, grasshoppers and stinkbugs. In an organic garden, such as the one I oversee, it is not an easy battle and at times, it is an impossible one. Use of neem oil spray is limited to temperatures below 90 degrees. Red pepper spray, insecticidal soap, copper fungicide and compost or tea extract require repeated applications after a rain event. Adding beneficial nematodes to the soil and releasing predatory insects such as lady bugs, green lacewings and praying mantids can be of some help but keep in mind these will tend to move about from space to space.

My biggest battle every year is with tomato diseases (tobacco mosaic virus, late blight, tomato yellow leaf curl virus and gray leaf spot). I have tried increasing the spacing among plants, using a trellis system, and adding a large commercial fan to improve the air movement as well as using all the recommended organic sprays. The best solution has been purchasing plant varieties from Johnny Selected Seed that have proven to be more resistant to these diseases. Favorites include Citrine, Jasper, Mountain Magic, Sakura, Chef’s Choice Orange, Grand Marshall and Big Beef. I also start tomatoes very early in the spring inside a greenhouse that can offer heat and supplemental lighting. This allows me to get large 6-inch pots of well-rooted plants into the ground by the end of March. Tomatoes appear by mid-late May and plants will produce heavily for about four weeks until disease sets in. Then it’s time to remove the plants, discarding them into the trash or an area far away from the growing site so that the potential for disease spread is limited. You can snip off diseased leaves, placing them into a bag for quick removal from the garden. Be sure to clean the pruning shears after each cut by dipping the blades into a 10% bleach solution or simply spraying 91% isopropyl rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide on the blades, wiping the blades down after 20 seconds.

My second biggest battle is not with the tomato hornworm (which I hand remove) but rather with another very unwelcome visitor that seems to appear overnight in great numbers, crawling in threes, fours and fives on every ripening tomato and flying into me when disturbed. The culprit is the eastern leaf-footed bug (Leptoglossus phyllopus). This insect is closely related to stinkbugs, with a piercing-sucking proboscis that it inserts like a tiny straw into a ripening tomato. It sucks out some of the juice, leaving a small yellowish spot on the skin. The enzymes injected into the tomato quickly cause a breakdown of the surrounding tissues and often the secondary pathogens that the insect carries on its mouthparts cause rotting. When harvested, the lesser-damaged tomatoes have a very short shelf life because of this. Typically, they will need to be eaten in one to two days. Many tomatoes, if not harvested soon enough, will not make it out of the field, simply rotting and falling off the plants before harvest.

Adult leaf-footed bugs are ¾-inch in length and have dark brown bodies with a narrow cream-colored stripe across the middle of the back. The hind legs have flattened, leaf-like expansions on the tibia. They overwinter as adults and emerge in April but most of the heaviest numbers are seen in July, August and September. Mating occurs during these months. Females lay tiny golden brown slightly cylindrical eggs in straight rows on leaf midribs or stems. These hatch into wingless nymphs that then go through several instar stages; they will resemble the adults as they mature, acquiring the leaf-like expansions in the end stages.

The population of leaf-footed bugs varies year to year. The tiny bright orange-red wingless nymphs usually appear at the base of some of the tomato plants in late June-early July. An insecticidal soap will help to manage the population. The adults are very difficult to control especially organically. You can catch them by hand and squish them, which is just not quite as easy as cutting a tomato hornworm in two with the pruning shears. Leaf-footed bugs are known to attack fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts (especially damaging to pecan) and ornamentals. They are reported as major insect pests in citrus groves. I certainly consider them a major pest on my tomatoes.

Despite the woes of growing tomatoes in the South, tomatoes will continue to be a predominant crop in my vegetable garden. Is there anything more delicious than a fresh home-grown cherry tomato picked off a plant and popped directly into the mouth or a chilled slicer on a plate with fried zucchini or steamed corn on the cob?