What to do when tomato fruitworms take over

I finally started to get tomatoes from my garden. To my great dismay, I found worms that came out of a few tomatoes. What’s going on in my garden?

– Erica Peterson, Lincolnshire

It seems that you have tomatoes to face in your garden. I have not seen these parasites in the tomatoes of my garden at home (our dachshots eating tomatoes ripen were a more important problem for me). Tomato fruit verses are caterpillars that have had tomatoes and other crops, which in turn causes damage, then rots the fruits. This pest makes round and round holes in the fruits, and its diet in the fruit causes damage, resulting in internal rot. The excrement he leaves in the fruit are not very little appetizing. The caterpillars can be green, brown, pink or even black, and generally make entrance holes in the fruit near the stem. You can see light colored scratches along their sides.

To control them, start by inspecting all the fruits of your plants and eliminating those damaged. Then, inspect the plants for eggs, which are small with a creamy white appearance when they are posed for the first time and develop a reddish brown ring shortly before the blossoming of the larvae. The tomato fruit worms are small – about 0.5 mm – and have a flattened base. The eggs are individually weighted, spherical with a ribbed appearance. They are often close to flowers. Crush the eggs as you find them.

You can apply sprays containing Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) with plants. It is an effective biological insecticide against caterpillars. I suggest you carefully check your tomatoes before taking a bite for the rest of this gardening season.

For more advice on plants, contact the Plant Information Service at Chicago Botanic Garden at Plantinfo@chicagobotanic.org. Tim Johnson is the main director of horticulture at the Chicago Botanic Garden.