Home Grown Tomatoes

Growing Tomatoes – How to Stop an Earwig Party on Your Tomato Plants
By Diane Palmer

Tomato Plants suffer from pests, just like any other plant in your garden. But personally, I found Earwigs to be the biggest pain.

They love to eat the leaves of a tomato plant, and if there are enough of them, this can kill the plant. If you are just battling a few, then, picking them off by hand may work.

But most earwigs, tend to form a crowd, and head into your tomato garden between 2 and 4 am for their buffet snack. Some are brazen enough to eat during the daylight as well, but the night is their perfect setting for some midnight snacking.

Here is what worked for me. If you are a beer drinker, then this is good for you and the tomato garden!. Earwigs love yeast, and guess what is in the beer?. Yeast!

You can do this a few ways, you can pour some beer in a tinfoil pie plate and leave it in the garden overnight. The earwigs are attracted to the yeast and fall in. This will get rid of quite a few.

But if you have a windy area, like me, then this might not work so well. You will wake up to pie plates everywhere and beer spray! Find a container you can bury, or better yet, buy beer in cans, drink about 1/2 of the beer, then bury the beer can, leaving about 1 inch of the top of the can sticking out of the ground.

The earwigs will crawl into the can. Make sure you have finished your watering of your tomato plants, then place the can. Every couple of days, replace the can with a new batch of beer.

So, now you get to enjoy the tomato garden even more, as you will now need to drink a 1/2 beer, or have a party if there are a few rows of tomato plants that need to be protected. You will be happy and so will your tomatoes!

click here for tips on growing the best tomatoes on the street. Article and website by Diane Palmer

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