Doug, that is original,lol. Jen, the best remedy for stinkbugs is prevention, first if you recognize the eggs take those away, after the young ones can be sprayed but the big ones I use gloves, paper towel saturated in alcohol and smash. The alcohol prevents the smell because I heard that other stink bugs can come when the others are smashed. They arrived early this year because of the warm winter... Silvia

yeah, that's what i thought, too. but over on the tomato forum, they id'd it as leaf-footed stink bug nymph. check out the color plates: http://ftsg.ifas.ufl.edu/LFBIBC.HTM i sprayed some pyrethrin and smushed the ones i could find. at this point in the game, the tomatoes are pretty unhealthy. if this does the trick, great. i'll count my blessings to have had fresh tomatoes from march to july. if not, hello fried green tomatoes and southern peas!

Wow, thanks. I don�t know why, but I have a big problem with thrips at my house. They really attacked my blueberry plants over the summer. But I guess there are different species of thrips because what I thought were thrips on my blueberries were white and smaller (barely visible to the naked eye), compared to these black thrips on my tomato plant. Either way, I hate thrips.

Jay, Well, until this week I would have said all "my" hornworms were hanging out in SW Kansas, but then a few more showed up here, so we know that is not true. When we have a bad hornworm year here, I usually start seeing them in March or April and I am not as kind to the very early ones because you know they could strip my seedlings bare before they can grow. I try to catch them very small in the earliest spring and feed them to the chickens. Once the hornworms are 4" long or so, the chickens won't touch them either. And, you're right, no one had better get in my way for the rest of the week. I am so far behind on garden work, and on putting up produce, that I am not putting up with any nonsense from anyone. LOL The break in the weather is rejuvenating both the garden and me. I worked in the garden for 4 hours this morning because the cool temperatures were too lovely to pass up. I didn't see any hornworms or blister beetles today, and only one stinkbug, so that added to my good mood. This afternoon, I'll be trying to work my way through a huge mound of tomatoes and peppers. I'm going to can most of the peppers, and maybe make some jalapeno jelly, and then roast some big tomatoes and boil them down to make sauce, and dehydrate a few hundred smaller ones. If I finish all that today, then tomorrow I'll get the onions into the cellar for long-term storage, dig potatoes, pick several dozen sweet peppers and put them up, and pick black-eyed peas. The melons are coming in at the rate of one or two a day, but we eat them about as fast as I pick them. Your ongoing drought seems like it has really contributed to the insect problem this year. I know we always have more pests in drought years, and they are just relentless. Your coworker who hasn't had a single hornworm will have some soon enough. I don't think I've ever had a year with absolutely none. His turn will come. (Not that I am wishing them upon him or anything!) Dawn