Keeping Tomato Worms and Pests Out of Your Garden

If you've spent any number of years out in the garden, you know how quickly pests and other varieties of tomato worms can destroy many weeks of hard work. They can devastate a tomato garden speedily and efficiently, leaving you without any delectable homegrown tomatoes at the end of the summer. If you're like me, you couldn't imagine the thought of such a waste of a season. The variety of types to pests and worms is large, but luckily it really isn't all that unmanageable to keep your prized tomato garden free of such savages, and ensure bushels full of juicy red tomatoes at the end of the growing season. In simplest terms, good soil and proper watering practices are two of the most important areas in which you can guard against unwelcome pests.

Hornworms are some of the most often seen varieties of tomato worms that you could encounter. They are big caterpillar-looking green worms with a series of alternating white stripes. They are quite hungry little characters, and can chew through tomato plants in short order, so you'll want to remove them as quickly as you notice them coming around. All you have to do is pick them off of your plants and get them as far away from your garden as you can. They are harmless to people, but most folks like to put on a pair of gloves before touching them anyway. It is a theory that one way of keeping hornworms off of your tomato plants is by putting a little dill in your garden, because the worm prefers its taste to the tomato.

If you have spent much time at all around tomato gardeners, you will without doubt be familiar with the terrible nematode. Though more of a problem in warmer, moist climates, nematodes can assault a tomato garden in just about any area of the country. They are actually found in the soil, and interfere with plant photosynthesis, which will in time destroy the tomato plant. Crop rotation is one effective method of stopping these invaders from destroying your tomato plants. Simply rotate tomato plants with other crops that are known to be nematode resistant, such as beets or summer squash. Another good trick is to grow marigolds near the tomato plants. They act as a protective barrier in the soil because there is nothing a nematode hates more than the smell of a marigold! If even after employing these preventative techniques, you still get nematodes in your garden, the only course of action is to uproot the affected plants, and relocate your tomato garden next year when planting again. It's best to leave a nematode infested plot free of any kind of plants for several years to get rid of them for good.

Yet another common pest in the community of tomato worms is the cutworm. They reside down in the soil and dine on the stalks and roots of the plants. It's not hard to take steps to prevent these pests from causing any major problems. All you have to do is bury a collar around the tomato plant about four or five inches beneath the top of the soil, leaving some above soil level. You can buy them at gardening stores, or just make them yourself out of cardboard and aluminum foil.

These are just a few of the tomato worms you may meet while tending to the garden this season. While they can cause a lot of damage, and even destroy your tomato crop, just a little prevention and attention to the plants will go a long way and keep these hungry worms at bay. Take care not to over-water the garden, make sure you keep your soil full of nutrients, and keep a mindful eye on your tomato plants for any unwelcome guests.

For further reading on tomato worms, and other garden pests, visit Tomato Gardening Secrets.