I could write a book on the things that eat at a lawn so I'll mention just a few and you can do your own research. Moles and voles...eat at grass roots. Slugs and snails do the same. Skunks will dig up a lawn to get at the slugs. Mice move across a lawn in winter eating what they find. If you have a slug problem try this: dig up a small section...about two feet square, look under the sod; if you have just a couple, don't worry about it...just pick them off and deposit into a bucket of soapy water. If you see more than 6...then action is called for. There are a number of methods of attack....do some reading on how to remove them. Moles and voles are the big troublesome pests that can destroy large areas of a lawn. Do read about them too. Dogs....urine. the female is the worst offender. If you have dogs of your own or neighbors' animals that visit, there is absolutely nothing that will cure the problem other than watering more often the place where they go...and replacing the sod with plugs, overlaying some topsoil and overseeding. There is no need to go to the extreme such as buying an electric fence, or laying down hot pepper that, if the animal gets it on his paws, then wipes his face, gets it in his eyes...and blinds him. Water from a hose is the usual shoo that works. And reminding his owner that any damage done by his dog will be followed by a bill in the mail for damage and repair.

Alexis, Thanks for posting the photo. Can you tell us how the issue progresses? For example, does the damage start on lower limbs and climb ever higher,branch by branch? Or, does it appear randomly all over the plant at any height and progress erratically? Or (and this could be an important clue), does it strike one limb only or one side only and only damage that area for a while before eventually progressing to the rest of the plant? Photos help a lot. It would be very hard to diagnose without a photo. And yet, photo diagnosis with tomato plant issues can be very tricky. The problem is that most things that can affect a plant, whether they are fungal, bacterial, viral, mechanical or physiological/environmental cause damage that looks pretty much the same....yellowed leaves, leaves that turn brown and crispy, wilting, discolored or rotting fruit, etc. In our climate, the flowers don't tell us much because heat causes blossom drop so you cannot rely upon blossom drop as a clue once the temperatures are above roughly 90-92 during the day and 70-72 at night. (Some tomatoes set fruit at temps higher than those, but the temperatures are a good general rule.) Now, if a plant was dropping blossoms when the daytime highs were in the 80s and the lows were in the 60s, that would be a clue we could decipher. Also, would you classify your area more as rural or suburban? There are things I might suspect as a cause in the country that generally you wouldn't see that often in the city. When a branch becomes sick, does it have fruit on it? If so, do the symptoms hit the fruit? Do they begin to look like the green and brown mottled tomatoes you originally posted? Or, do the fruit look okay and just fail to enlarge and grow because the sick plant cannot support their growth? If you use alfalfa in any way---in compost, alfalfa tea as a growth tonic/fertilizer, alfalfa hayt as mulch, etc., that could be a clue. If you have brought in any sort of organic matter (compost, cow manure, imported/purchased soil mixes or soil-less mixes, that could be an important clue. It is easiest to diagnose a disease on your own plants because you can see how the plant deteriorates from one day to another, whereas a photo of a sick or damaged plant only catches one moment in time. That is one reason it can be so hard for us to look at a photo and give an answer on an issue we haven't been able to watch develop day-by-day. However, that doesn't mean we cannot figure it out. Just that it is more challenging to do so. Are the three plants affected so far all in a row or are they scattered around? Dawn

You're probably going to be out of luck on this. Mohawk will say the material was not properly cleaned, thus voiding the warranty. They state all carpets must be professionally cleaned every 18 months (and you need to have receipts showing the work was done by a professional). If the material was damaged because of improper cleaning, I would go after the person who cleaned the carpet. I hope this helps.

I am a fabricator. any competent fabricator can repair the damaged area. would probably take a skilled guy an hour or so (longer if the scratches are deep.) The repaired area will reflect light a bit differently from some angles because the repaired area will be slightly dished due to the material removal required to eliminate the scratches. You may be able to save part of the cost if you tell the fabricator he can do it when he's "in the neighborhood."