Saturday, May 12, 2007

Spots on Tomatoes and Spots on Bugs

I haven't been to the garden this weekend yet, so no nice pictures to show you unless you're interested in 7 year olds playing football! No?

I did some research because my tomatoes, healthy up until yesterday, suddenly developed little spots on some of the leaves. I found a wonderful website entitled the 'Tomato Problem Solver'. Perfect!

The other website I found which I thought I should bring to your attention is the Harlequin Ladybird Survey website for the UK. We have Harlequins here in Holland and I don't like them much. Nothing at all like a Harlequin Romance, these bugs actually eat other native ladybirds!

I've seen some 7-spot ladybirds, but recently the Harlequins have been more prevalent. Larvae of both sorts of bugs is peculiar looking! Who would have thought a ladybird came out of such an evil-looking larva?

My tomato problem seems to be bacterial speck, or Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato, thanks to all the rain we've been having. I've removed the affected leaves and isolated the plants. Let's hope it doesn't spread.

Tomorrow I'll be in the garden making sure the slugs didn't eat absolutely everything that's growing.

2 comments:

Vertine said...

wat zonde van je tomaten. Hopen dat het helpt wat je gedaan hebt. Ik heb ze nog niet geplant, ik wacht op warmer weer en meer vrije tijd....

Anonymous said...

I've seen the Harlequins before, but I never understood what they were.

Fortunately I haven't seen too many in either Amsterdam or Friesland.