Pests Eating Greenhouse Tomatoes Almost Whole

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I have a batch of late season tomatoes still growing in cages in my greenhouse. I find large sections of tomatoes eaten, sometimes almost half. Grasshoppers are dead now due to cold. The only thing else I can figure is slugs or mice. I don't really see slug trails on upper levels of tomatoes. While mice could eat on the ground, can they really climb up the plants and eat hanging tomatoes? I live in Maryland zone 7. First frost around 10/21. Greenhouse is unheated. I have found slugs eating lettuce and removed them and there are mice in greenhouse I'm catching, but I haven't figured any direct evidence linking either to tomatoes eaten. I don't figure gnats can eat this much at a time. Any thoughts?

-- Derrick Comfort (dcomfort@crosswalkmail.com), November 01, 2000

Answers

Mice can go anywhere they want to. I cannot tell you how many times we watched mice zip right up our holly tree, go out to the tiniest little branch and swing like tarzan over to the neighbors Winter bird feeder to help themselves to seeds. I also used to have a problem in the Fall with mice enjoying the late tomatoes..we also caught a few squirrels munching them, but not with much enthusiasm.Wild rabbits used to eat them in the Fall as well. WE never bothered trying to dissuade any of them because none of the critters bothered our plants in season, and there weren't that many tomatoes left anyway.God bless.

-- Lesley (martchas@gateway.net), November 01, 2000.

Could be mice or rabbits. If its mice, try setting traps with different bait (they seem to like variety).

-- Jay Blair (jayblair678@yahoo.com), November 01, 2000.

That happened to me, turned out to be horn worms. Easy to pick off if you can stand to touch them. I got my friends son to come over and find them and feed them to my chickens. All of us were thrilled with the arrangement (except the horn worms).

-- Julie (julieamc@excite.com), November 01, 2000.

I had tomatoes eaten half way gone this summer. Couldn't figure it out untill one day I came around the row and saw my cat sitting there and eating it. For real. He did it all summer.

-- Cindy in Ky (solidrockranch@msn.com), November 02, 2000.

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