Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

lately i've been finding a few of my tomatoes have holes in them from something eating it's way into them.
when i've got the thing open the offender hasn't been present, so i'm unsure what is doing in.
I spray everything with dipel so i'm not sure it's a catapillar, some kind of other bug maybe?

do you have a loose apple corer?

Miniature crop circles!

Sounds like the Dipel did its job

In the US, I would suspect a tomato hornworm. They will also eat the leaves down to stubs and can be quite damaging. They blend in with tomato stems so are hard to see in spite of the fact that they can be as big as your finger. They leave poops in proportion to their size, so that should be easy to spot, at least.

If your plants are outside, it could also be birds. Some of them will peck holes into the fruit, especially when it is nearly ripe. Try a bird net spread over the tops of your plants if you think this could be the cause.

You guys....

Area 51!!!!

i guess it could be birds, there's lots of them here getting the moths etc.

If it's a fairly neat round hole then it's probably the "Hornworm" caterpillar as Janet suggested....

If it's birds then, unless they're just pulling the caterpillers out they'll leave a more mangled hole....

For some reason Bower birds seem to love Tomatoes just as they start to colour up..... problem is they never just peck and eat one or all of one

If the holes are there but you can't see any caterpillers then the Dipel has probably killed them, or forced them to the surface and the birds have got them.

yeah it's weird, it's like the grub started eating the fruit then just bailed out and left a hold about 5mm deep.
another one down this morning i hope this isn't the begining of infestation.
what else can i do besides dipel?

we have a similar problem with the strawberries

There's always the search-and-destroy method.

my problem with the strawb's is a rat about 5'8".

search and destroy isn't going to work when i'm away for 8 days at a time. I need to find something to deter them. I have tom's on my aquaponics system now so it's going to need to be a fish friendly solution to.

preditor bugs...
but I'm not going there again!