Thanks again everyone. If (or more likely when) I see another in my garden I will definitely post a picture. I have been dealing with these spiders for 12 years now, ever since we built our house in what was formerly farm land. We have our home and surrounding area sprayed regularly every 3 months to control for them but my garden is not in an area that is sprayed for obvious reasons. We have taken efforts to remove their habitat by getting rid of bricks, etc., that were used for landscaping and made lovely little homes for them but I don't know that we will ever be completely free of them. I don't scare easily but these things terrify me. I always wear gloves but now I am afraid to even work in there! Thank you for all of the suggestions. By the way, I called my pest control guy and asked for his opinion and he told me to spray liquid sevin dust every day until I don't see anymore. Scary much? :)

I have grown up around these all my life (our home as a kid was infested with them), and have what I guess are many hundreds in my tiny back yard aloe garden now, though baking hot summers have taken their toll on these little 'pests' (or 'pets). They do do a pretty good job keeping the larger insect numbers down, but would be a lot happier if they would eat mealies, snails and white flies (which they seem to ignore for some reason). Actual chance of getting bit by one is pretty remote, unless they climb up your pant leg, or you pick one up with your bare hands.. mine seem to take off in the opposite direction any time I disturb them or their ugly webs (they have about the least interesting webs of all the spider world). Massive numbers of egg sacs seem to matter not as probably one one out of thousand babies survive any length of time at all, and half of those will end up being harmless males. one of my back yard 'pets'

I didn't know much at all about Brown Recluse spiders until I read a thread here on this forum last summer. In June we started seeing a whole lot of spiders inside our house, and because of that GW thread, I started looking at the spiders I killed with a magnifying glass. I was horrified to find they were Brown Recluse spiders. We finally hired a pest control company because I was literally obsessing about the spiders, dreaming about them, scared to put my hand anyplace I couldn't see into, really scared to death. And that was very unusual for me, as I've always "lived" outside and had more than my share of spiders crawl across me, and they'd never fazed me before. But the Brown Recluse are a whole 'nother ball game... I've too found that the best thing for killing them are glue boards. We have glue boards hidden behind all our furniture and along the baseboards, trying to catch as many BR spiders as possible. We've never had a problem with any other bug in our house except brown recluse spiders. :( I don't know why we have so many here. The county extension agent told me he thought it was because we have so many thousands of acres of agricultural crops grown in this area. And also maybe because our house is log and cedar. But we also have them in our shop, and it's a steel building. So who knows?? Y'all are scaring me about the black widows hiding on the tomato plants. At least I will now be aware they might hide amongst the tomatoes, and pay attention. Once as I was feeding my horses, I glanced in my colt's feed bucket before I poured in his oats. To my horror, there was a black widow spider sitting on a tumble weed inside the bucket. I tried to shake it out to kill it, but it hung on tightly with me bouncing the bucket off the ground many times. So I took the bucket up to the house for DH to kill the spider for me, as I was totally creeped out. Lo and behold, when he bounced the bucket on the concrete driveway, a second black widow came from underneath the lip of the bucket. That nearly scared me to death! Two black widows on one bucket at the same time! I felt so lucky it hadn't bitten me as I bounced that bucket on the ground over and over, trying to knock the first spider loose. Or bitten my horse if I hadn't looked in the bucket before pouring his feed inside. I have to say, if I didn't love my new home so much I think I would pack my bags and move back to Murray county! These poisonous spiders scare me so bad it's unreal. I know I sound like a big sissy but they're probably about the only things in life that does scare me.

Black widow venom also packs quite a wallop...to almost anyone. It's very important that you do all you can to make sure that you aren't transporting these spiders to the market. I think what I would do is take some time to unstack and wash the pots out very well...don't forget under the rims, too. Restack them and store them in heavy duty plastic bags that you can keep tightly closed. I've had a major problem with them this year, too. Also in my stacks of pots and flats of cell packs. It will be a darned miracle if I don't get bitten before the summer is over.