subject: Keeping Tomato Worms Away From Your Garden [print this page] If you've spent any amount of time out in your vegetable garden, you know how rapidly pests and other varieties of tomato worms can damage many weeks of hard work. They can devastate a tomato garden quickly and efficiently, leaving you without any scrumptious homegrown tomatoes at the end of the summer. If you're like me, you couldn't imagine the thought of such a waste of a season. The variety of types to pests and worms is big, but luckily it really isn't all that unmanageable to keep your cherished tomato garden free of such savages, and ensure baskets full of juicy red tomatoes at the end of the gardening season. In the most basic terms, good soil and proper watering practices are two of the most important areas in which you can defend against unwelcome pests.
Hornworms are some of the most often seen types of tomato worms that you might see. They are big caterpillar-looking green worms with a series of alternating white stripes. They are fairly hungry little guys, and can gnaw through tomato plants in short order, so you'll want to get rid of them as quickly as you notice them coming around. All you have to do is pick them off of your plants and get them as far away from your garden as you can. They are harmless to people, but most folks prefer to put on a pair of gloves before handling them anyway. It is a theory that one means of keeping hornworms off of your tomato plants is by placing a little dill in your garden, as the worm prefers it to tomato.
If you have spent much time at all around tomato gardeners, you will without doubt be familiar with the dreaded nematode. Though more of a problem in warmer, damp regions, nematodes can ruin a tomato garden in just about any part of the country. They are actually found in the soil, and interfere with plant photosynthesis, which will eventually destroy the otherwise healthy plant. Crop rotation is one effective plan of stopping these worms from ruining your tomato crop. Simply rotate tomato plants with other veggies that are known to be nematode resistant, such as beets or summer squash. Another good trick is to put marigolds around your tomato plants. They act as a protective barrier in the soil because there is nothing a nematode dislikes more than the odor of a marigold! If even after employing these preventative techniques, you still get nematodes in your garden, the only course of action is to remove the affected plants, and move your tomato garden next season when planting again.
Yet another common pest in the community of tomato worms is the cutworm. They live down in the soil and dine on the stalks and roots of the tomato plant. It's not hard to keep these pests from causing any significant problems in your garden. All you have to do is position a collar around the tomato plant, buried four or five inches beneath the surface of the soil. You can purchase them at gardening shops, or just make your own out of cardboard and aluminum foil.
These are just a number of the tomato worms you might encounter while tending to your garden this summer. While they can cause a lot of harm, and even ruin your tomato crop, just a little prevention and attention to the plants will go a long way and keep these hungry pests at bay. Take care not to over-water the garden, keep your soil healthy, and keep a close eye on the tomato plants for any uninvited guests.
