The Trouble with Tomatoes

Here is Tricia's Mother's Day bench.  She wanted this bench placed in this very spot so that she could sit in the shade, drink coffee and watch the garden.  It is a peaceful spot, for sure.  If you could add audio to this photo, it might not seem quite so peaceful.  There's a goat that's not quite weaned that's hollering for a bottle, roosters are crowing, cows are mooing, dogs are barking.  But you know what?  It is still a peaceful, nice spot.

The garden looks nice from that serene, pastoral spot.  But just beyond the picket fence, there's a sinister plot brewing.  Annie, the Nubian goat, despite my best efforts at barricade building, has been successful in a scheme of craning her neck over the garden fence.

She's snipped off three branches of a Cherokee Purple tomato plant and devoured it!  Annie's antics cost us in tomato production.  I'll be fashioning yet another panel to thwart her from doing it again.  You've always got to be thinking three steps ahead with these goats!

If we are successful keeping the goats out of the garden, we still have quite a time with worms and bugs.  That's why I've started to pick our tomatoes when they just start to turn a pinkish color.  I put them on a platter inside and let them ripen indoors.

The label you hear about "vine-ripened tomatoes" sounds great, but I've found that if you leave them to ripen on the vines, the bugs and worms (and goats) will get far more fruit than we will.  Here's one of the culprits I'll introduce you to: The Stink Bug!  It's called that because if you squash it, it emits a nasty odor that really stinks.  These boogers will sting the tomato and cause scarring and discoloration.  Bringing them inside before ripening betters your chances.

Let me introduce you to another villain: The leaf-footed bug.  See him on top of the green tomato?  He stings the tomato and causes scarring to the tomato.  Secondary pathogens enter the opening in the fruit where the leaf-footed bug damaged it and causes the fruit to rot.

There are things to kill these bugs, perhaps, but we don't want to spray poison on the food we'll be eating.  Harvesting early seems to be the trick.

Another thing we have to watch is growth spurts after rains.  After a rain, and the sun warming things up, the tomato will grow so fast that it rips the skin open.  The fruit grows so fast that the skin can't keep up.  Look at an example of this below.  Can you see the long cut?  That's from rapid growth.  

We're picking 8 to 10 tomatoes a day right now.  They turn red quickly indoors and then those we don't eat or cook with, we put in the refrigerator.  Pretty soon, we'll be canning them and drying them.

I ain't gonna lie, but I am gonna LYE

The tomatoes are ripening now.  Each day we keep our eyes on the ripening fruit and endeavor to pick them and bring them in before the predators eat them first.  We have birds that will peck on a red ripe tomato, squirrels that enjoy taking a bite or three out of them as well.  But the biggest pest, by far, is the stink bug. We don't like spraying chemicals on foods that we're going to be eating, so we've been looking for a natural method to kill or repel these dreaded insects.

Homegrown tomatoes

As the weather warms up, stink bugs appear in the vegetable garden.  They are kind of hard to spot as they will land on the tomatoes and will circle the vegetable opposite of where you are looking.  I was able to get a picture of this one by running my fingers on the bottom side of the tomato.  This made him circle around to the top.

The Dreaded Stink Bug

If you smash them with your fingers, they emit a chemical from their abdomen that really stinks, hence their name.  The stink bugs cause significant damage to our tomatoes each year.  They will land on the tomato and bite the fruit.  They release a toxin into the fruit that causes the outside of the tomato to turn yellow.  The interior below the yellow sting will turn white and hard.  That is called "cloudy spot."  It is unsightly and ruins an otherwise perfect fruit.  You can cut away the affected pieces and eat the remainder.  But it would be nice to find something to eliminate this pest.

Tricia was doing some reading and came across an article that said that lye soap was used as an insecticide in the past.  We eventually plan on making our own lye soap, but for now we purchase it.  A quick search on the Internet turned up the following post from Appalachian Heritage Soaps by Beth Ann Weber.  In that link, the author says that lye soap has been used as an insecticide for over 200 years.  

She says that the way it works is due to the fatty acids in true soap.  Lye soap contains fatty acids made from animal fat.  Those fatty acids in the soap get into the exoskeleton of insects and begin to break down the cell walls, killing the insect. Sounds interesting.  She has a recipe for making it:  Grate a tablespoon of lye soap and add it to a 1/2 cup of hot water.  Once it has dissolved, add 2 Tablespoons of dissolved soap into a quart of water.  We followed the directions and mixed up a batch.

Lye Soap Insecticide

I went out to the garden and sprayed a bunch on all the tomatoes.  It seemed to annoy the stink bugs, but I couldn't really tell if it repelled them.  I picked a few near ripe tomatoes to bring inside as I was spraying. When I brought the tomatoes in, I discovered that I had a hitch-hiker - a stink bug travelled in with me attached to the tomato.  We had a perfect 'lab rat' to see what the lye soap would do.  Tricia gave the Stink Bug a liberal spraying of lye soap and lo and behold...

A Bug's Life Death!

The Stink Bug turned over on his back and died promptly!!  When we went to the garden, there appeared to be less stink bugs on the tomato plants.  I think this method has promise, but you have to apply every day.  I also have a friend who uses a battery powered vacuum cleaner to suck up the stink bugs from her tomatoes. We'll keep trying the lye soap concoction as it seems to be the best option for organic methods of killing/repelling stink bugs.