Tomato Russet Mites

There has been a lot of talk about the Tomato Russet Mite this year. Why? Because the murdering little %$#&# s have been out of control killing tomato plants all over the place.

It all starts out innocently enough. A brown leaf here, a wilting branch there. When my husband first saw signs of it, he did what he usually does and blamed me. “See, I told you that you weren’t watering enough.”


I had just put in a drip system to make our lives a little less complicated, and there he was, my husband, day after day, watering by hand on top of the irrigation the tomatoes had already gotten, muttering under his breath what a loser gardener I was.

Much to his dismay the leaves were turning browner and browner and the plants were withering away. My husband kept watering even after I received the email from Cynthia Sandberg of Love Apple Farms about TRM.


You can’t see Tomato mites with the naked eye; you need a 14x lens to see them. They suck the life out of your plants starting at the ground up, leaving the leaves and stems brown and curly, and eventually killing the whole plant. They have already done damage by the time they are discovered, but there are ways to control them.

You can treat the infested plant with mined sulfur dust. Cynthia suggests using Azatrol, a miticide. She says that Azatrol acts faster than the sulfur dust.


I’m pretty sure that the first garden the mites infiltrated was mine. The message through the grapevine was that I was a lazy gardener. The Tomato Russet Mites knew that if they set up shop in my garden, I would just let them stay there. I might occasionally curse at them and in turn my husband would curse at me, but I have too much going on to find the time to actually kill them, so there they stay, quietly killing my tomatoes. 

And here I am collecting as many tomatoes as I can before they wither and fall off the vines.

Oh well, there’s always next year.

Comments

[Elizabeth]

So THAT's what has destroyed my tomatoes this year! Good to know (for next year).

[Katie]

What a bummer!

[Kalyn]

Hmm. I have some tomato plants that are a little sickly, but they don't seem quite this bad so now I'm puzzled.

Sorry about your tomatoes.

[chigiy]

Hey Elizabeth,
The mites are terrible this year, ask Daniel, he will tell you all about it.

Katie,
It is a bummer, but I got some great tomatoes anyway.

Kalyn,
It maybe a California thing, I don't know. It was a damp winter and mild summer and they say that made it worse.

[[email protected]]

I'm so glad you posted these photos. It's affecting my tomato plants, too. I've been pruning off the brown leaves, and spraying the green leaves with a concoction I use to annihilate %$#&# squash bugs.

Recipe: Soak garlic in mineral oil overnight, then add 7th Generation laundry soap, and water. Spray early morning or late afternoon, to avoid angering the bees.

Your harvested tomatoes look great!

[chigiy]

Hey Markene,
So it sounds like your "special spray" is working. That's great, I love to here about home made remedies. Excellent.

[David]

Markene,

Do you remember the ratios of each of those ingredients?