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applestar
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Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

What do you think made THESE holes in the tomato fruits?

LEFT - beautiful baby maters
MIDDLE - UGH!
RIGHT - another ugh!

Image

In the middle photo, I'm thinking those round holes were most likely made by some kind of caterpillars -- maybe cutworms. Some of the fresh damage is a bit of a puzzler.
One candidate is chipmunks. I found a green Marz Pulcent on the patio that had been gnawed.

Another possibility is that twice now I have watched birds -- cardinals hunting in the tomatoes like they always do, usually coming up with green caterpillars which may or may not have been hornworms.

A surprise was a catbird. And in fact it was right around this plant -- I watched it disappear from view, then come back into view holding a green long dangling thing, which it proceeded to throw on the ground several times and chop up into pieces before eating them.

House Wrens are among the tomato foliage all the time and sometimes I see them with little skinny green caterpillars which I always thought was a cabbage white caterpillar but maybe hornworm, too?

Maybe the catbird or one of the other birds damaged the fruit while trying to pluck a caterpillar off? I didn't look closely at that one in the Right photo -- looks very suspicious like something could be lurking in that scar/hole, but the center one was unoccupied.

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rainbowgardener
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Location: TN/GA 7b

Tomato fruitworms often make bigger holes or two of their holes run together. But I did find this picture of tomato fruitworm damage:

Image

But I think if it is fruitworms, when you open the tomato up, you would find the worm inside. Have you opened one of these?

Armyworms make a bigger mess and hornworms usually peel a bunch of the outside wall off.

Image

Slug damage can look sort of like that too:

Image

In that case the slug might or might not be still inside.

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applestar
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Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

Eww .... very similar rainbowgardener -- I guess I have to investigate further. I'll report findings.

Well, in any case, I should go ahead and cull those damaged fruits. Hopefully the other(s) on same trusses are undamaged and will be given the chance to grow bigger than when they were sharing with truss mates. 8)



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