A couple of suggestions before you give up:

Lay out a tarp or an old sheet, or take the container with the tomato plant over to a paved surface. Lay the plant, container and all, on its side. Closely inspect all the stems and leaves that you can see from that angle, even run your fingers over them to check for anything that feels soft instead of plant-like. Then roll the container a little bit, say 1/8 - 1/4 turn, and inspect some more. Enlist the help of your children if they are old enough to understand what you are looking for (show them pics). Kids have sharp eyes and are amazingly good at spotting bugs.

If a little of the loose soil from the top of the pot falls out, don't worry about it, you can put it back when you're done. And it might even help. This is because although it's only a remote possibility due to the plants being in containers and more than one plant being affected, it's still possible that the culprit is actually a cutworm, especially if your cucumber was also eaten. Hornworms don't feed on cucumber plants.

The usual stereotype of a cutworm is one that lurks in the soil and attacks young plants near the soil line. But variegated cutworms can climb, and your plants are older ones with tough stems that would not be attractive to a cutworm at the soil line. Variegated cutworms will climb a plant at night to feed and then go back down to hide just under the soil surface during the day. So you might want to scratch away a couple of inches of the mulch or loose soil from the surface while you've got the pot on its side on the tarp, and see if a fat gray or tan caterpillar curled up into a C shape falls out.

I didn't suggest a cutworm earlier because you said new damage appeared during the day, which sounds more like a hornworm. And a cutworm on the plant at night should have been visible when you checked with your flashlight, since variegated cutworms aren't green and don't blend in well with the foliage.

Ragardless of whether you find anything, while you've got the plant laid out where you can easily get at the undersides of the leaves, you might want to give the plant another dose of Bt or Sevin or a blast of water with the hose, whatever you feel the situation calls for, just in case you missed a little cutworm or hornworm. It's the undersides of the leaves that you especially want to hit, because that's where cutworms and hornworms hide and feed when they are on the plant.

If you have a long growing season, it's way too early to give up. The plants will come back and if you still have several months before the growing season ends, you'll get tomatoes.

Ragtime,

I feel your pain and frustration! I lost an entire garden to critters (deer) two years in a row. But I am trying again this year. Hope springs eternal.

Good luck finding and eradicating your culprits. Fish & Game frowns on shooting deer out of season...But I did cheer when one of them showed up dead on the side of the highway! (I just prayed that the damage to the vehicle was minor and no human was injured.)

Bets

I certainly would wish that sort of thing on any human that raided my garden, but not an innocent animal that was simply hungry and looking for something to eat. If you don't want to be bothered by wildlife, why don't you choose to live somewhere that is not already inhabited by other non-human creatures.

I feel for ya ragtimegal. I am fighting an ogoing battle for my cucumbers & cantaloupe. Problem for me is I cannot keep the Bt on long enough between rains. Been raining here in S. FL on and off every day and night for about a week. Even just a rain that lasts a minute, even that washes off the Bt.

AAAAaaarrgggg....

Hormworms and cutworms are so easy to take care of.

Go outdoors at dark with a flashlight. they come up out of the ground at night and feed most of the night. Look for the tiny ones. you can drop them in a can of water. they will drown over the long term. do not spill it.

Go out 5 or six times the first night if you are having success. After a few days their will be only a few.

Most come up even a few minutes before dark because they are hungry from not eating all day.

I like to use a small flashlight like a mag light or now the LED lights.

Remember when you find a huge horn worm during the day time. That bugger has been eating on your plant for weeks as a tiny baby every night. Get them early. All cut worms start out as tiny caterpillars eating leaves. Later they get too big and fat and go for the big cut meal.

I find them very easy to catch on pepper plants when first put outdoors. I get hundreds of them at night. Used to get thousands. I also get them on small lettuce.

If a plant gets cut off dig a little looking for the cut worm. Always start extra plants for replacements.

If you want to clear an area early in the season you might try onion bulbs. they love onion stems and are fairly easy to spot. pull the onions as scallions before putting in your tomatoes or peppers.

You can also spray everything with BT. But I hand pick them off.

Yep, both cutworms and hornworms are caterpillars, so they're both vulnerable to BT. Note that BT only survives on the surface of a plant for a couple days, so it has to be continually reapplied.

Ragtimegal: If you get too frustrated with your outdoor garden, do you have anywhere in the house where there's enough room for an indoor garden? I have one of each, and while the outdoor one is occasionally frustrating, the indoor one is always a delight.

Re, bets and the deer: Tried an electric fence? They even make solar powered ones now. I've even heard of people baiting the fence with peanut butter to make sure that any deer in the area get a brief shock and learn to stay away from it.

anthony_toronto

Historically deer are not a problem where I live, since in the 15 years in this house I have seen all of four or five and usually at a distance. In the past if we have seen them, they pass us by for the alfalfa and corn fields. But we had several dry years, range and forest fires, so they came down out of the hills when they normally don't. My garden was green and moist when little else was.

The one hit on the highway was crossing between a cornfield and an alfalfa field. I would not hit one on purpose, nor wish anyone else to hit one. I didn't actually cheer, that comment was intended to be tongue in cheek (after all, it was already dead) and I was pretty sure someone would point out the hardship or damage done to the car or people by hitting the deer, so I added the part about the prayer. I offer up prayers for every accident I see, deer related or not.

I am over half a century old and have driven thousands of miles in deer country every year and have never hit a deer on the highway. I did hit one in the past, in the middle of town where you really don't expect to see one, but I saw it and I was nearly stopped by the time we made contact. The silly thing more or less walked into my car, looked at me through the windshield, then trotted to the side of the road and jumped a six foot fence. The deer was possibly not even bruised and it did no damage to my car. As the Fish and Game guy on TV says, "If you decide not to hit a deer, you won't."

karenrei

I have had solar powered electric fences for livestock, but if you make them tall enough to possibly stop deer, there is a good chance they will get caught up in it when they try to jump it or run through it. So we don't build them that high. I don't expect to have a deer problem this year. We have had plenty of moisture and things are greener than they have been in the past.

Add to that the fact that a couple of the farms north and southwest of us have added irrigation pivots and I am unlikely to have a problem with them. Plus one or more of our new neighbors (city folk moving to the "country" I believe) allow a number of dogs to run loose at night. They keep me awake with their barking and they chase and kill some of my (mostly wild, "set free" in the country) adopted cats that I have fed for years, but they may also act as deer deterrents.

Bets

Thanks for your encouragement everyone!

I'm still a little bitter over the whole thing, but I will try to look again for the worms. I was wondering if they would hide in the mulch in the container, so I will look again and poke around in there. Seriously, I've been out with a flashlight multiple nights, up at 5:30 am looking and never found a single worm, which is why I am so frustrated. I think that the cukes may have been eaten by the rabbits, so if I'm going to prevent that, I apparently need to wrap some chicken wire around the containers.

I won't be home for a few days, so hopefully when I return I will have plants to return to.

Thanks again for listening and offering your suggestions.

~Angela

Hornworms are so incredibly well camouflaged that you will miss them nearly all the time. Your eyes go right past them.

Where I am -- and I don't know if this is local conditions or if it's normal for hormworms -- I only see one or two worms per tomato plant. Either they don't lay many eggs per plant, or not many of the eggs hatch, or some insect gets most of the hatchlings while they're small.

From the amount of damage on your plants, I'd be expecting to see a 2" (maybe 3") hornworm on each damaged plant. They'll be 3/8" thick, maybe a bit more. And at that size, your brain sees them as tomato stems.

You may be missing them because they're so large.

I have more luck looking for movement of the plant than for the hornworms themselves. If I'm lucky and there's no wind, I'll see movement as the worm feeds, and that lets me finally see the darn things. The other way is to get my son and his eagle eyes involved, but by the time I accomplish that miracle the tomato plant is long gone.

Chuck

I've heard that hornworms stand out in black light. Never tried it. Maybe time for one of those party lights.

I agree with Anthony. I love deer. I especially like them cooked with some of the vegetables from my garden. If they have been feeding on my neighbors garden all summer, they taste even better.
Ted
:)