Jo, Without knowing her current average daily high temp and humidity it is hard to say if the plants could tolerate neem twice a week. I'd probably alternate spraying neem/water with a spray of a commercially-prepared insecticidal soap (not a homemade one) like Safer Insecticidal soap. Because lygus bugs (aka tarnished plant bugs) are a true bug and not a mere insect, they are very, very hard to kill and as far as I know there is no research-backed proven organic method of controlling them. (If there was, we'd be using that method on other true bugs that plague us like stink bugs, leaf-footed bugs and squash bugs.) The best organic control of any kind of bug likely is Beauveria bassiana (hope I spelled that correctly), a fungus that is the main ingredient in several products like Mycotrol O. However, these are very expensive insecticides. I think the lowest price I've seen for a quart bottle of Mycotrol O concentrate was a little under $100.00. Is this her first experience with the tarnished plant bug on her tomato plants? Although these bugs like tomato plants, they prefer other plants like alfalfa and often don't bother tomatoes as long as they have something around that they like more. Tarnished plant bugs are one of the major pests of agricultural crops in the USA and attack about 1/2 of all known crop plants. There are some predatory wasps that control them, but they also are very expensive and wouldn't be worth the expense unless lygus bugs were causing so much damage that you mother could not get any yield at all from her veggie garden. One problem with true bugs is that many of them eat by 'sucking' and not by chewing, so insecticides sprayed on plants have little effect on them. I think that rotenone and pyrethrin are somewhat effective on them, but even though they both are organic, both are so hazardous to humans and/or domesticated animals and wildlife that I'd never use them. Dawn

Looks like chlorosis. There are many reasons this could happen. Aglaonema needs a lot of light and a lot of heat. It needs at least 70 degrees, 75 is better. It's soil should never get below 65-68, bottom heat may be needed also. It could also be a deficiency. Try giving them a little epsom's salt, about 1/2 tablespoon to a gallon of warm water to dissolve it. Let it get to room temp and water both of them. Move them to a south facing window, you may need to supplement the light and heat. I would also check for spider mites. Put a white piece of paper under a leaf and flik it. If they are mites, there will be microscopic black dots on the paper.

It may grow past the damage. Or it may not. I personally would eat the fruit they produce--others may have a different opinion--but the badly damaged ones may not produce fruit or only produce a small amount, and it may be stunted. The brown spot on the tomato in the first picture looks like damage from rubbing against the cage. Such damage is no big deal unless a mold or something takes the opportunity to start rotting the fruit or it attracts the attention of a pest. EDIT: For future, maybe you can put your plants somewhere else on your property. If not, maybe you can talk to your neighbor and come to some kind of agreement or you can offer to pull his weeds by hand/hire a neighborhood kid to pull his weeds by hand or something, depending on what problem he's trying to solve.

I started out top watering but I was never sure how much to give and would sometimes see gnats which made me think I was overwatering. Gnats are a fair indication the upper portion of the grow medium is remaining too wet for too long. This can be due to the medium being overly water-retentive, the grower watering at intervals too short, or a combination of both. I will try watering and letting it drain as you suggested. How often would you recommend and should it just take a few seconds or so to completely soak the soil or should I be letting the water run through for longer? The ideal way to water is slowly, so you're evenly covering the entire top surface of the soil column. When water appears at the drain hole, stop watering and wait a few minutes (10 or so) and then add additional water. Ideally, at least 20% of the entire volume of water applied in both applications should exit the drain hole and not have a pathway back into the pot, which would be the undoing of the reason for watering to beyond the point of soil saturation. If you are still getting the sense the soil is holding too much water, the simple act of just tipping the pot to a 45* angle after watering will force additional water from the medium. A and B are the same pot, except that B has been tipped to a 45* angle. Notice the difference in how much less excess water B holds in comparison to A. This is a simple way of making a big difference in limiting the amount of excess water a planting can hold. For pots the size of which are easily managed, try taking advantage of Newton's First Law of Motion. Immediately after a thorough watering, hold the pot in one hand over the sink, lawn ..... and move it downward, then sharply reverse the direction to upward. You'll immediately note that a good measure of 'excess' water will “continue downward in a straight line” and exit the drain hole. The sharper the reversal of direction, the more water exits the drain hole. When you have repeated the exercise until water no longer exits the drain hole on the reversal of direction, you will have eliminated all excess water and your plants will regard you with a newfound sense of awe. To easily determine what watering intervals are, follow instructions (below) re making/ using a wooden tell. Proper watering is a critical aspect of any plant care regimen. Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 is a complete nutritional supplementation program from a single source. It is arguably the best 'go to' all purpose fertilizer product on the market for a variety of reasons. If you water as I mentioned and fertilize about every 3rd or 4th watering in the summer and about every 5th or 6th watering in winter, you should be fine. That will be on the low side, giving you room to increase the solution concentration if you think it's required. To keep track of when it's time to fertilize each plant, drop a marble or button in the pot whenever you water, that way you'll know what watering is 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. When you fertilize pick up the objects and start over until it's time to fertilize again. Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Questions? Al