Hi all! I am a fellow Austin gardener who has a lovely vegetable and flower garden in the backyard! Loving this time of the year 🙂
I have been having trouble identifying a new arrival of beetles (I think?) to my garden. More specifically, they seem to LOVE my tomatoes, and I’ll often find 3, 4, 5+ of these little guys on each tomato, nomming away at the top!
Does anyone know what these might be, and if so, are there any preventative measures I can take to reduce the numbers?
by drkbrhds
5 Comments
They are leaf footed nymphs. They love tomatoes. You can brush them off into soapy water to kill them, or just squish them. They are slower on the mornings. They lay eggs on the underside of the leaves and you can lose control quickly. I have lost control of them myself.
Agreed, leaf footed bugs. I take a glass of soapy water around the garden and knock them off into it. They ruin tomatoes
They’re leaf footed bugs. Nasty bastards. Quite smart and sentient. They’re usually not a big problem, unless you have a bunch of peppers/tomato plants. One year, we grew so many tomatoes and the leaf footed bugs were so bad (they were harassing me!) that my partner and I teamed up; I knocked the tomato plants to send them flying, and my partner would suck them out of the air with a shop vac.
They destroyed my peaches this year.
Just let ’em be