Okay, is the next morning and there is little or no movement from the bugs. I am more worried about the Spider mites as they are to hard for me to see. I used about a tablespoon of soap in a quart spray bottle and yes, I sprayed the underside of the leaves. This morning I sprayed the plants down with the hose sprayer to get the soap and dead bugs off. I will crush and boil some chili peppers to spray for mites if I see any sign of them today. Tomorrow I use the Black flag! Dave, I did give these plants one last 1/2 strength shot of N fertilizer, 5 June, about 3/4 cup per plant. Next treatment is not until 1st of Aug. and will be 10-24-10. Also 1/2 strength. I think I just wanted one last jump in growth due to out shortened season. Now it is all about the fruit.

Gilmoregal, Tomato plants can tolerate a fairly significant amount of spider mite damage and survive it and produce just fine if they are otherwise healthy. Rhizo took the words right out of my mouth. The same thing is known to occur when you use Sevin as well, so one of the worst things you can do with spider mites is to spray the plants with a broad-spectrum insecticide that kills off all the beneficial insects that actually help keep the spider mites under control. Usually, particularly when you're only dealing with a small number of plants, you can blast the majority of the mites off the undersides of the leaves by spraying them with a sharp stream of water. Sometimes you have to do it every day for 3 to 5 days in a row because they keep coming back for a while. I will do this occasionally if I think there are too many of them on a specific plant and it seems to be struggling more than the other plants, but we have mites on literally every plant on our 14+ acres, so I am not so foolish as to think I can somehow eliminate them from a veggie garden that is a few thousand square feet when they occupy all our acreage and all the acreage that surrounds our acreage. We all live and garden in the real world, and the real world is an ecosystem full of living creatures of all kinds---including spider mites. I started out this spring with a little over 100 tomato plants and saw spider mites out as early as April, so my plants have had them for months....and they haven't killed a single tomato plant, and we have had bumper crops of tomatoes. I've canned until I simply cannot bear the thought of canning any more. If the spider mites were a real threat to my tomato crop, based on how many we have, there wouldn't be a tomato crop at all. Spider mites are a constant issue in our hot climate, but the predatory mites and the lady bugs usually keep them somewhat under control and I just tolerate them otherwise. I could spend all day every day in the warm weather season fighting them (and then I'd have to fight them in the greenhouse in winter too), and we'd have them anyway. If you even could get rid of them all, more would just blow in on the wind...... Regarding your question about fertilizing the plants, the quick answer is that you probably shouldn't do it. Want to know why? If the plants are not showing signs of nitrogen deficiency, for example, then they don't need nitrogen. By feeding nitrogen to plants that don't need it, you've overfed them, and plants that are overfed with nitrogen will attract more spider mites. So, feeding the plants could give you exactly what you're hoping to avoid. Research has shown that plants which are fed excessive nitrogen above and beyond what they need become more attractive to spider mites. I believe it is because the excess nitro leads to extra carbohydrates in the foliage and the spider mites are attracted to the extra carbs. Often, as gardeners, we over-react and try this, that and the other thing when we really just need to chill, watch the plants and take simple steps like spraying the undersides of the leaves to knock the mites off. You also have to be very cautious about spraying the plants in very hot weather because some substances that do not harm foliage in cooler weather can burn foliage when used when the temperatures are in the 90s and 100s. Amy, I see them first on tomato plants every year, but then they usually do move on to herbs, and sometimes flowers and sometimes melons, but don't do enough damage to them either to really alarm me. They also heavily infest my cilantro and culantro (and borage but usually not basil) plants every spring so I am not convinced spraying the plants with cilantro tea would be any more effective than spraying with plain water. I learned the spider mite lesson as a child in the 1960s and 1970s when my dad, who was a lifelong farmer/gardener, fought them fiercely in our backyard garden. His best friend who lived and gardened a couple of blocks away fought them in the same manner. They sprayed with Kelthane, which certainly didn't seem to help. They sprayed with Sevin, which seemed to increase the population of the spider mites. The more they sprayed, the more mites they had. So, even as a child, I knew that spraying wouldn't eliminate the spider mites and would, in fact, increase their population. It was an important lesson to learn young. You don't forget those kinds of lessons that you learn from seeing a specific activity occur every garden season year after year and decade after decade. By the 1980s, my dad wasn't spraying his plants for spider mites any more, and they were much healthier than his plants had been back when he sprayed. Usually, after mid-August and after the temperatures begin to fall a bit, the spider mite population begins to decline as well. Dawn

Those (eggs) look like psyllid nymphs to me, the actual eggs are very tiny and are often found hanging on the edge of leaves in a row, the "aphids" are the adult psyllid flies. I had nymphs on one leaf but they were on the underside of the leaf. Look at the thread that's titled "HELP! tomato problem solver" and then select the one that is from UC Davis for good info about this tough insect to battle. Also you could google pictures search for "Psyllid tomato" etc. Also use search feature on this website for psyllid, there are a few of us that have battled them. Those buggers are pretty nasty, the nymphs that are attached to the leaves inject toxins to your plant. Mine was attacked pretty young, I ripped off the leaf when I saw it and for at about a month my plant was pretty severely stunted. Has fruit all over it but I have pulled off the first four largest ones because they had brown spots more like the last pic than your #5 pic. I'm thinking my plant is finally recovered as is catching up to my other plants in size and becoming bushy, though time will tell if it will be strong enough/mature enough to produce good fruit. Anyway, looks like you have a few things going on here, your plants may be pretty stressed due to the toxin, leaving them more susceptible to the other blights and diseases right now. I would also take advice from others as I'm really a new gardener but I'll give you my two cents anyway. Also look at the problem solver for the TAMU problem solver and just look through all those pics and decide what you've got. For what it's worth, I would pull off all leaves with the scaly buggers on them. Check undersides of leaves carefully as well, though one gardener here has tried scrubbing the scales off instead of pruning, though I'm afraid scrubbing or scraping may damage leaves too so I would just prune as long as you don't have to defoliate your plant entirely. Also prune off the most diseased leaves and branches, then cull the bad fruit (it will probably get worse, be inedible and is sucking energy that your plant needs to use to recover). BTW, #5 looks like plain old BER to me but plant may just be stressed and immature to avoid it. Then spray entire plant and under leaves with insecticidal soap (search for insecticidal soap on this site for tips), it most likely won't get the nymphs off the leaves, that's why it's best to prune or manually remove the nymphs. The soap will get rid of adults and probably the eggs that are so hard to see. I think that the soap has to be washed off within a few hours, so do that. Then I would use Daconil spay (Ortho Garden Control, Chlorothalonil) per bottle instructions, don't wash off and don't spray your leaves for 4 or 5 days ....also, be careful as spray can burn so apply early evening may be best. If you are organic, you can also try Serenade...that's actually what I used but it looks like you have a tougher situation than what I had. Daconil is actually widely considered to be about the safest spray of this type so I have bought some myself to combat further issues. I would also buy some more mulch to get a really thick layer going and let them rest for a few days, keeping them moist of course, don't get the foliage wet with water at all if you can help it. After 4 or 5 days rest I'd feed them. I've been using a high-end commercial fertilizer from a local nursery but many here recommend the seaweed and fish fertilizer combo and I will probably move to that next year myself. You can mix those two (again search for what other people have discussed on this fertilizers here) and do both a foliar feed and a feed with their water. I wouldn't use Miracle Grow or Jobe's, just might be too risky and burn them or something. You shouldn't need to refertilze for a while, two week intervals maybe? I do 10 day intervals with my commerical stuff. Not sure what your soil and ammendments were like but I wouldn't fertilize much differently than you would ordinarily after you get the first round post-Daconil done. Anyway, I don't think from my limited experience that you have a bacterial problem so that's good news. I also don't think you've got the curly virus so that's also good. I think that the curling is just the stress, if you start to notice more problems with more severe curling you may indeed have it but I doubt it living where you do. I do think your plants will recover, they don't look that bad. You may need to make a $25-$30 investment to get the soap, daconil/serenade, mulch, fish, and seaweed ferts but those bottles should last you at least through next year too since you only do a few plants. (don't know shelf life of organic ferts though) I buy the full-strength and dilute per instructions, much better value. Good luck and hopefully others will have suggestions. This is just mine from what I've done and would certainly repeat if I go to battle with the nymphs again.

Dickie, Jean- thanks for the input. I've been reading up, and I think that spider mites are smaller than these guys, so I'm more convinced they are clover mites. The body looks exactly like that. But I'm confused because all I've read about clover mites say they are found in houses. I can't see anything about them being around tomato plants. Now mind you, they were on the CONTAINER when I took that pic, not on the plants. But I can only assume they will be there, soon. Last week I found these same insects on my sungold and in that case they WERE on the plant. I treated that with Safer Garden spray (neem based) and it knocked them back on that container. Maybe this will help solve the mystery: I also found some strange egg sacs in the soil of my plant. They are globe shaped, and about as big around as a BB. When squeezed, they burst and seem to have high fluid content. This is clearly the egg of some other kind of insect... whether beneficial or pesty remains to be seen. Do others know: can I control clover mites the same way as spider mites (i.e. neem oil, etc?) If so I guess the distinction doesn't matter all that much. Thoughts on those egg sacs would be great too though. I just want to administer the proper treatment so my tomatoes can remain happy! Thanks!