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| Stink Bug Damage |
Stink Bugs - I hate them. They've wreaked havoc upon our tomatoes this year. I had a beautiful GIANT plant of plum tomatoes that produced giant clusters of tomatoes. Sadly, most of them rotted before they ripened (I'm guessing after being chewed upon by the stink bugs). Those that ripened still had obvious stink bug damage - see above. These tiny parasitic wasps can't come soon enough! Not that I approve of fighting one invasive pest by importing another. That's never backfired before...
Luckily we had a few tomatoes that did produce and avoid the rather of the stink bugs. Two weekends ago as Hurricane Irene blew into town, I picked the tomatoes from the vine (assuming they would be blown off and smashed). Somehow, we ended up not eating them. So a few nights ago, before they all went bad, I sliced them up and placed them in a 200 degree oven for six hours and made "sun-dried" tomatoes. We'll store them in an airtight container in the freezer and use them for recipes all winter long.
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Is it the stink bugs? I had the same problem where tomatoes went right from green to rotting as they colored. I just ripped out the plants. I wasn't getting tomatoes worth eating, and the rotting fruit made me unhappy. I wondered ifvthe bugs were injuring the tomatoes and opening them to infection.
ReplyDeleteExactly - my understanding is that it is the stink bugs. http://www.growit.umd.edu/PlantandPestProblems/StinkBug.cfm They make small holes in order to suck out the juices and then these lead to rotting. As if having them swarm our screened deck isn't insult enough.
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