Southern California tomatoes being half eaten at night
Hello,
Just recently several of the tomatoes I have been growing in my backyard have been halfway eaten during the night time hours. The tomatoes are heirloom varieties and are in a raised bed type situation which is over a concrete surface. The tomatoes are still green but fairly large in size. It appears that the tomatoes are being chomped on, scratched at and sometimes hallowed out. There are no animal droppings to suggest rats or opossums. However tonight I put rat poison out and went to check the poison at approximately 11:00 pm to see if it had been chewed at and discovered that the poison was untouched but four additional tomatoes had been partially eaten. Two of the tomatoes appeared to have fang marks and the other two were just hallway eaten. I know for sure there are opossums in the area, however I am not sure that they are the culprit. There are also a lot of crickets, but Im not sure if they could do that sort of damage. I did have tomato worms but I have taken care of the worms. There are dropping on some of the leaves, however I believe they are left over from the worms. Any ideas of what the animal is, and how to stop it from eating all the tomatoes?
Comments (11)
cold_weather_is_evil
9 years agodmenace79
9 years agoThey are on a drip system and are being watered at each tomato plant with a gallon and some with a two gallon feeder for ten minutes three times a day. I am sure that they are being eaten by an animal. When I say "hollowed out," I mean there is an animal that takes a bite of the tomato and then eats away at the inside. There are also other tomatoes with just bite marks in them. I also have a cherry tomato plant that had hundreds of green tomatoes now depleted to a couple dozen. I attached a photo on the original post and another one on this post for reference. Thank you in advance for any advise.
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9 years agojean001a
9 years agodmenace79
9 years agocymraes
9 years agojean001a
9 years agolm13
9 years agodjkj
9 years ago
Ed MacLaughlin
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agoi am having the same exact problem. half eaten 'hollowed out' tomatoes as soon as they start to ripen.. what is doing this? i have put different types of bug spray including RAID on them before i go to bed and they still get eaten!!! i have also fenced in the plants with chicken wire and they still get eaten! i have seen little flying insects all over them, but don't think these little flying bugs can possibly eat that much in 8 hours at night?
dmenace79Original Author